‘Bogus’ armymen dupe engg student

Nagpur: A 22-year-old engineering student was duped of Rs83,580 by two tricksters on the pretext of selling him a second hand two-wheeler in October last year. The trickster allegedly posed as army personnel.
Sumanraj Ankari, who hails from Chhattisgarh, is a student of electronics and telecommunication engineering at a college in the city. He lodged a complaint at MIDC police station on Friday.
According to police, Ankari, a resident of Mhada Colony, wanted to buy a two-wheeler for commuting to college. He identified a vehicle an online application on October 28, 2019. The vehicle owner Ashish Khandelwal was selling it for Rs20,000.
When Ankari called up Ashish, the latter allegedly said that he is an army man working at the Nagpur airport. Ashish asked Ankari to send Rs1,000 as token amount for booking the moped, which he did, said cops.
On October 29, Ashish called up Ankari to Mangalmurti Chowk to get delivery of the bike but after waiting for a long time the former did not show up. After some time, Ashish called Ankari and asked him to send Rs2,020 needed to bring the vehicle out of the airport. When Ankari transferred the money, Ashish asked him to call his friend Pravin Kumar to get the vehicle’s delivery.
When Ankari called Kumar, he first sought the remaining money for the vehicle. Ankari sent Rs17,000 but Kumar again demanded money claiming some difficulties in bringing the two-wheeler out of the airport. Ankari sent Rs83,580 in total before he could realize that he has been duped.
The same day, Ankari filed a complaint with the cyber complaint cell (C3) of city police. Sources said the cyber cell officials did not take cognisance of the matter that time.
C3 officials had been regularly claiming that if a person is duped and he approaches them the same day, they can help him get the money back.
This is not the first time when the tricksters have posed as army men to dupe people.