Thane (Maharashtra), Feb 1 (IANS): An absconding scamster from Chhattisgarh wanted in connection with fake lottery schemes and floating bogus companies to cheat people in the state of over Rs 1,000 crore, has been nabbed by Maharashtra Police here, an official said.
The accused - a gold medal-winning medico, Prithipal Ramsinh Sethi, 65 - was absconding from the clutches of police in Chhattisgarh's Mahasamund since 2015, said Crime Branch Senior Inspector Nitin Thakare.
"He used to set up bogus private limited companies, claim to install plant and machinery, amd issue advertisements luring investors with high returns. After the gullible investors put in their money, he would simply shut down the offices and disappear to another location," Thakare told IANS about Sethi's modus operandi.
Among the companies Sethi had floated was Togo Retail Marketing Ltd, which had figured in the list of 193 companies blacklisted by the Securities & Exchange Board of India in 2015.
Following many complaints by cheated investors, police in Mahasumand had registered an FIR against Sethi and his associates on December 21, 2015, invoking various sections of the Indian Penal Code and the Prize Chits & Money Circulation Scheme Banking Act, 1978, he said.
Acting on a reliable tip-off, a team of Crime Branch sleuths from Thane lay in wait for Sethi at a bus station near the Bhiwandi Bypass Road on Monday evening and nabbed him.
Investigations revealed that since fleeing from Chhattisgarh, Sethi had been staying under an assumed identity in a posh locality of Ram Mandir Road suburb in north-west Mumbai.
Sethi was produced before the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate, Thane, who sent him to judicial custody till February 6.
"Two years ago, a team of Chhattisgarh Police had come here for assistance to track him down, but he was untraceable. Now, we shall make arrangements to transfer the accused to that state for further action," Thakare said.
From the preliminary investigations made by Crime Branch, Sethi's racket was flourishing in several other states in India virtually undetected by various official statutory bodies and watchdog organisations since several years.