Fraud dupes woman in name of installing mobile tower, held

Rajkot: Junagadh police on Thursday arrested a Jaipur-based conman Ravi Chouhan, 32, who allegedly duped a woman of more than Rs 65,000 by promising her rent of Rs 45,000 per month for installation of a mobile tower on her plot of land and also giving Rs 35 lakh as advance. With this arrest, police busted a gang of such frauds who were involved in conning people in the pretext of renting their land to install towers for mobile companies. They also created fake documents and operated various bank accounts fraudulently on fake identities.
The arrested conman was also found to be operating 16 bank accounts with fake IDs.
In her complaint, Hasmita Jaria, a resident of Junagadh town, told the police that she had received a message on her mobile phone a few months ago asking for people who possess 250 square feet of land for the installation of a mobile tower to respond. The message also described that the mobile company will pay Rs 35 lakh in advance besides monthly rent of Rs 45,000. When she called on the number provided, a person received the call and introduced himself to be from Dolphin Tower Services, said the police.
After getting details of her land, Jaria was asked to deposit Rs 5,150 as entry fee the next day and was provided with bank account details. After she paid the amount, he sent her documents over email, asking her to pay Rs 61,250 more. More documents like terms and conditions etc were couriered to her.
However, after the payments were done, the person went incommunicado. Jaria then verified the documents and found them fake. She then approached the police.
Junagadh superintendent of police Saurabh Singh said, “We have initiated investigations, based on bank details and phone numbers which Jaria has given to us. We came to know that the account was opened on fake proofs, but we could reach him through his photograph the bank gave us.” Police nabbed the accused from Nirmal Vihar area in Jaipur and recovered mobile phones and SIM cards of various mobile operators, ATM cards and passbooks of banks from his possession.
During interrogation, Chouhan, a taxi driver who has accounts in 16 different private and nationalized banks on fake identity proofs, confessed that nine months ago he approached Jaria with the fraud offer. He also confessed that he was working for one Jitu Chowdhri of Mathura and Somendra allies Dada of Kanpur, two racketeers who run a gang of online frauds in Kolkata, Noida and in many other cities.