Bengaluru: 7 cheat engineers with job promises, nabbed

BENGALURU: Seven people have been arrested for allegedly cheating several government job aspirants by promising to get them a junior engineer or assistant executive engineer's job at Bangalore Electricity Supply Company (Bescom).
The accused are Prajwal D, 28, of Attur Layout; Praveen M Somanakatti alias Balaraj, 28, of Gollarahatti; Pradeep K, 34, of Kunigal; SD Purushotham, 49, of Yeshwantpur; Lohith B, 46, of Jalahalli; Shivaprasad Channannavar, 28, of Belagavi and his father Vijayakumar Shivalingappa Channannavar, 57.
Prajwal was allegedly the kingpin in the racket while the other six were middlemen who identified potential victims. They used to target engineering graduates eager to land government jobs.
Claiming good contacts at Bescom, they would promise to get permanent jobs for them for a price. The fraudsters had fixed rates between Rs 25 lakh and Rs 35 lakh. The middlemen would collect the money and give it to Prajwal. They used to get commissions. Prajwal would create fake appointment letters and send them to the victims.
The fraud came to light on May 22 when 29-year-old Vaibhav Venkatesh Kulkarni of Hukkeri in Belagavi walked into the Bescom office on Crescent Road, Bengaluru, to report for duty as a junior engineer. Vaibhav produced an appointment letter, which was found by Bescom officials to be forged. KP Somashekar, assistant executive engineer, Bescom, filed a complaint with High Grounds police.
A team headed by inspector Shivaswamy CB questioned Vaibhav and came to know that he had given Rs 20 lakh to the Channannavars. Based on their information, police arrested the other five. Police also seized fake seals, order copies, marksheets of several job aspirants, a laptop, a printer, a car, and Rs 5.5 lakh from the gang.