Rajkot: Hundreds of people in the city have been cheated of nearly Rs 60 crore by office bearers of a credit cooperative society who lured them with handsome returns and good interest rates.
Police booked Sanjay Dudhagara, Gopal Raiyani and Vipul Vasoya who were running Rameshwar Sarafi Sahakari Mandali for the past six years. All three are on the run.
Dudhagara was its chairman, Raiyani vice-chairman and Vasoya the manager of the institution.
“They took deposits of various amounts from people by promising them handsome returns with good interest rates. The investors were offered alluring monthly, quarterly and yearly schemes. They had made 4,200 members from Rajkot city, Padadhari taluka and Kalawad and Jamjodhpur talukas of Jamnagar too,” said police.
However, many members didn’t get returns on their investment on time. The fraud came to light when Sanjay Sojitra, a resident of Rajkot city, visited the co-operative society’s office a couple of months ago and found it closed. Sojitra’s father had invested Rs 11 lakh some years ago. When his father died, Sojitra went to the society office to collect the dues worth Rs 31.67 lakh.
While inquiring about the co-operative society, Sojitra learnt that the trio had duped many more members who had also approached the CID (crime) for lodging a complaint.
After conducting some investigations, the Bhaktinagar police station booked the trio for fraud. Of the Rs 60 crores they swindled, Rs 3.11 crores are of people from Rajkot city while the rest from other district areas.