West Bengal: Three illegal call centres busted in Keshtopur, 12 arrested

KOLKATA: Three illegal call centres –- all of them operating in a residential neighbourhood of Keshtopur -- were sealed by Bidhannagar police on Wednesday.
In the call centres, 200 odd men and women had been making fraudulent calls to people, offering them jobs against registration fees and installation of mobile towers on their house terrace or vacant properties.
Total 12 of their officials, including a woman, were arrested.
Cops had busted a similar racket last year as well.
Probing into Wednesday’s case, cops found several employees of those offices which were sealed last year, had themselves honed their skills and had opened fresh fraud call centres by themselves and had started duping customers from old databases available with them.
“The callers would introduce themselves as representatives of telecom operators and randomly call people asking if they have vacant plots or empty places on their terraces where they can install mobile towers. On other occasions, they would pose as IRDA officials willing to settle a disputed insurance bond or sometimes as officials who would arrange easy personal loans against minimum documents. They would also pose as employers offering jobs to people who may have lost employment during the pandemic. Once the victim falls in the trap, they lure them into paying a fee to them as registration and a slew of other fraudulent fees,” said a senior officer of Bidhannagar Commissionerate.
On Wednesday, acting on a tip off, cops first raided a building at Prafulla Kanan West in Keshtopur and found 25 men and women making fraudulent calls at the illegal call centre. It led to a second raid at another office two blocks away on the ground floor of a building where cops found 55 employees operating out of another illegal call centre. A third illegal office was busted at another residential building a few blocks away where 100 men and women were on call.
Cops seized computer hard disks, mobile phones, attendance registers and a large number of data sheets from their possession.