Dry fruits scam: Woman with Rs 25,000 reward arrested after 3 year search

NOIDA: A 30-year-old woman wanted in the Rs 200 crore dry fruits scam was arrested near the Electronic City metro station on Wednesday.
Originally from Agra, Neel Kamal was on the run for the past three years and carried a cash reward of Rs 25,000 on her arrest.

The dry fruits scam, which is being investigated by an SIT, is believed to be worth almost Rs 200 crore. Gullible dry fruit traders were promised export of their consignments to various countries. They were given a token amount initially, but the payments stopped after sometime.
Police said Neel Kamal would talk to the traders on behalf of the company she had floated with Mohit Goel, the mastermind of the Freedom 251 scam that promised people the world’s cheapest smartphone.
“She had 11 cases of cheating registered against her at Sector 58 police station. All the cases were related to the dry fruits scam. She had been untraceable since 2020 and carried a reward of Rs 25,000 on her arrest. She had been repeatedly changing her location to avoid arrest,” said Amit Pratap Singh, ACP (central Noida).
Neel Kamal and Goel had opened an office—Dubai Dry Fruits and Spice Hub—at The Corenthum in Sector 62 along with others. Many traders from Punjab, Haryana, UP, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Delhi, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and other states had lodged complaints against them.
“They would purchase dry fruits from traders with the promise of exporting them. They made some payments initially. But once the traders started supplying in bulk, the accused issued them a few cheques. All these cheques bounced,” Singh said.
So far, 17 persons have been named in the FIRs in connection with the scam. Neel Kamal was the ninth accused to have been nabbed in the case.
Apart from the office in Sector 62, the accused had floated several sham companies with addresses in Delhi-NCR and other states, where they cheated traders in the name of exports. The SIT formed to probe the case had estimated the fraud to be over Rs 200 crore.