New Delhi, Jul 4 (IANS): A 29-year-old man, who used to pose as a senior bureaucrat to cheat people on the pretext of procuring licences of petrol pumps, gas agencies and house allotments under House and Urban Development Corporation (HUDCO), has been arrested here, police said.
According to the police, the accused has been identified as Sampath Kumar Surappagari, a resident of Medchal district in Telangana.
Police on Wednesday said that in 2013, the accused came to Delhi for preparation of civil services examination but he could not succeed and started publishing a daily newspaper from Karol Bagh.
According to G. Ram Gopal Naik, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP), Crime Branch, in May 2017, one person Malipaddy Sandeep, a resident of Hyderabad was approached by K. Ramaswamy, who stated him that his nephew Sampath Kumar is a senior bureaucrat and posted at Delhi who can procure licences for Bharat Petroleum and Bharat Gas.
"K. Ramaswamy induced Malipaddy Sandeep to pay an amount of Rs 1.8 crore for both the licences and agreed that Sampath would get 2 licences of petrol pumps and gas agency by the end of August 2017," said Naik.
Thereafter, both Sampath and K. Ramaswamy kept speaking to the complainant till October 2018.
Sampath gave Sandeep several forged letters to induce him. From November 2018, both the persons stopped calling Sandeep and even stopped picking up his calls following which complaint got suspicious. Sampath gave the victim bank cheques which bounced. Samptah even threatened to kill Sandeep for the complaint he registered with police.
"The accused was recently arrested in three criminal cases in Hyderabad and got bail. But, he did not join investigation in the present case. Thus, a Non-Bailable Warrant was obtained against him. On July 2, acting on specific inputs the accused was nabbed from a Hotel in Delhi's Mahipalpur area," said Naik.
During interrogation, the accused revealed that in order to lead a lavish lifestyle he used to introduce himself as a senior bureaucrat, and later, he prepared fake IDs of government departments and used it to influence the innocent persons and started cheating people.
Police are making efforts to apprehend the other accused persons involved in this cheating racket.