Rourkela: Police Friday arrested eight youths of Bandhamunda area, who were members of a racket that managed to loot crores of rupees cheating people in the name of Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC), a television reality show hosted by renowned actor Amitabh Bachchan.
Umar Ali, a youth from Delhi, is the mastermind of the racket, police said, adding, he was still at large.
The accused were identified as Santosh Balkrishna Rao (26), Rohit Kumar Saha (23), Bikash Sahoo (23), Suresh Saha (25), Dhiren Rout (27), Dilip Saha (36), Ramdas Beshra (27), and Sambit Swain (35). Police also registered cases against two more youths – Rajiv Sharma (26) and Sarojkanta Sutar (27) – of the area who are on the run.
The group looted the money from people in 2014 misleading them to be the winner of KBC, said Bandhamunda IIC Sushanta Dash.
According to the police, mastermind Ali first collected the telephone numbers of people from various mobile networks and lured them with SMSes. He used to ask people to deposit Rs 1 lakh in a certain bank account to get the KBC prize amount of Rs 25 lakh. Trapped by the ploy, many in the city deposited money but got nothing in return.
The youths of Bandhamunda had been asked to open accounts in several Rourkela branches of a private bank for which they were being paid Rs 3,000 a month. These persons handed over the ATM cards and account numbers to Ali after opening the accounts.
Police investigations revealed that people were asked to deposit the amount through cash deposit machines which is why the database of the depositors are not available with the bank at the moment.
Acting on a tip-off, IG RK Sharma of economic offence wing (EOW), asked SP Umashankar Dash to arrest Rohit Saha of Bandhamunda over the swindle. During interrogation, he disclosed the involvement of others and their link with kingpin Umar Ali of Delhi. PNN
