Bhubaneswar: Lingaraj police Wednesday arrested a man on charges of duping several job aspirants of Rs 40 lakh by impersonating a Railway official. The police also seized several fake documents and incriminating materials from the accused. According to the inspector in charge (IIC) of Lingaraj police station Purna Chandra Nayak, “The accused, identified as Rohit Kumar Mahanta, 31, of Balasore district, had left for Kolkata in search of jobs in 2014. There he did several odd jobs to make both ends meet.
Meanwhile, he came across Suraj and Deen Dayal Singh who later became his associates.” Suraj and Singh are now at large, he added. The IIC said a complaint was lodged by Sripriya Mishra, who runs a consultancy firm in Samantarapur here in 2020, alleging that she received a phone call from Rohit, who introduced himself as an official in West Bengal’s Railway department. During the call, Rohit said he knows the Divisional Railway Manager (DRM) here, and if needed, he could guarantee recruitments in Group C and D posts of Railways. For the recruitments, he, however, demanded Rs 8 lakh for ‘C’ category and Rs 6 lakh for ‘D’ category posts, the complainant said.
Later, Sripriya intimated the aspirants and paid Rs 40 lakh to Rohit after collecting the amount from them. As per the deal, the aspirants went to Dhanbad to complete their training and accept the job offer. During the training period, they were paid a monthly stipend of Rs 10,000 and a job letter by the trio. Later, to their shock, they realised that they had been duped by the scammers as there were no genuine job letters from the Indian Railways. Lingaraj police have booked the trio under relevant Sections of Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) and produced Rohit before a local court Wednesday. Meanwhile, the consulting agencies acting as the conduits of job fraud have come to the fore.
DEBADURLLAV HARICHANDAN, OP
