Saharanpur (Uttar Pradesh), Sep 12 (IANS): In a shocking revelation, a postman has allegedly duped several people in about nine villages in Saharanpur of their savings in the post office.

The postman, Rakesh Kumar, never deposited most of the money he collected from the account holders and before fleeing, he even collected passbooks from most of his victims and set them on fire.

Station house officer (SHO) of the Behat area, K.P. Singh, said, "The postman, Rakesh Kumar, was running a sub-centre of the post office in Muzaffarabad village which had over 2,000 accounts of people from nine nearby villages. He fled with all the money. Now we are searching for him. His son has been apprehended and is being interrogated."

The SHO said that the postman had never opened any account of these villagers. When police tried to verify the account numbers given by the villagers from the main post office in Saharanpur, the officials there said that most of these accounts were either fake or owned by someone else.

"Almost all the accounts were fake. He duped hundreds of people, even those who were working with him from the last many decades," the SHO added.

Nem Chandra, former pradhan of Khurrampur village, said that his village has a population of around 2,000 people and a majority of them had, at least, one account in the post office run by Rakesh.

"He looted the entire village and fled. Hundreds have been duped in nine villages," Nem Chandra claimed.

The villagers have lost all their savings. Some had saved money for their children's weddings while others had deposited their entire savings in the 'account'.