The four persons arrested by Dattawadi police on November 1 in conection with an admission racket have made a whopping Rs1 crore by cheating parents of students seeking college admissions. The cheaters had been operating in four colleges in the state in past couple of years, targetting students not only in Maharashtra, but also in Rajasthan, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Delhi.
The fraudsters mainly targetted students seeking to get admission to first year in MBBS. The fraudsters used to collect data of the MBBS aspirants from private coaching classes and then send them SMSes offering admissions. The kingpin of the racket, Sunil Singh, has been arrested by Rajasthan police. The Dattawadi police are likely to get his custody in the next couple of days.
Speaking to dna, police sub inspector Niraj Ubale of Dattawadi police station said, “After arresting the suspects, we interrogated them and found that they have cheated students in Navi Mumbai, Nashik, Karad and Pune based colleges in the past couple of months. The cheaters are educated and well versed in English language. Their appearances are also decent, so parents easily trusted them and later duped them.”
The suspects were wanted in the cheating case of Dattawadi police station where they had duped a student from Punjab of over Rs 22.52 lakh on the pretext of securing him admission through the management quota of a city based medical college. Vatandeep Kamboj (20) of Abhor taluka in Fazilka district, Punjab, had come to Pune to seek admission to the first year MBBS course. He received an SMS from an unidentified person, who promised to help him get admission.
Modus operandi
After getting the mobile numbers, the fraudsters used to send SMS to the students randomly. When they got response from the students, they would hatch a plan to exact money from them. One of the suspects used to pose as a college principal while others posed as college authorities. Later, they used to take the MBBS aspirant to the college corridor and speak to their colleague. After confirmation, they would ask for cash amount and also demand drafts. After getting all the money, they immediately left the city.
Who are the fraudsters?
All arrested fraudsters are educated and had met two years ago in Delhi for some work. They formed their gang and started operating in the country. The arrested suspects are from well do family. We suspect that two more persons are also members of the gang but they are on run.
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