Faisal Fareed 
Daijiworld Media Network - Lucknow

Lucknow, Nov 23: Lucknow police arrested a fraudster on Wednesday who had duped a Surat trader in Gujarat for Rs 2.50 crore. The fraudster was also wanted in nearly a dozen fraud cases in Lucknow. Police stated that Surat police has been intimated about the arrest of the fraudster.

As per reports, Lucknow police arested one Avnish Mishra, a resident of Raibareilly district from VIP Road, Azad Nagar in Krishna Nagar police station on Wednesday.

The arrested accused Avnish is reported to be a fraudster who had duped several traders. One of the incident was when he duped one saree trader Ram Autar Gupta in Surat. Avnish posed as a small businessman and took sarees from Gupta. He even made payment on time to win his trust. Later, he took one big consignment worth Rs 2.50 crore and vanished. A harried Gupta lodged a report in police station Umra of Surat district in Gujarat.

Avnish also had duped several persons in Lucknow. In once such case, he duped Kamal Pandey for finalising a scrap deal in Railways.  He also gave a forged letter for opening a tea stall at Charbagh railway station to them. Later, he took Rs 13.50 lakh from Kamal and disappeared. Later, he started E-ticketing work in jewellery market in Chowk locality of Lucknow. Soon he won the trust of Badri Prasad
jeweller and took jewellery worth 70 lakh from them and gave fake cheques for payment.

Police claimed that Avnish is a mastermind for many other duping incident in Lucknow. He changed his appearance and sported french cut beard and sometimes he remained clean shaven to disguise himself. In his modus operandi, he first used to take the trader into confidence and later disappear by bagging a huge consignment. Several documents in this regard were also recovered from his posession.