Kolkata, May 3 (IANS): A forgery racket based out of Ghazipur in Uttar Pradesh was busted after five men were arrested by the Kolkata Police's detective department (DD) on Tuesday.

The arrested have been identified as Shivam Pande, Rohit Kumar Gupta, Jitendar Kumar, Avishek Kumar Gautam and Uma Kanti Yadav. All are residents of Ghazipur.

They posed as high officials of the Indian Army, moved in various cities of the country and duped people of lakhs of rupees after promising them jobs in the defence services. Their latest destination was Kolkata.

The police said their modus operandi included gaining the confidence of job-seekers by sporting fake identity cards and fake documents relating to the appointments in the defence services and also used to provide the job-seekers with contact numbers. However, on receipt of money they would vanish and the contact numbers provided by them also became unreachable.

A top official of the city police said that recently some complaints were registered at the New Market Police station in central Kolkata and DD officials took charge of the investigation. Finally, the DD sleuths arrested these five persons in front of a popular hotel.

"Uniforms of the Indian Army, fake identity cards, fake application forms and appointment letters were recovered from them. We are trying to trace how they used to prepare such fake documents and we doubt that several others are also involved in this racket. We will present them at the court and seek police custody for further interrogation so that others involved in the racket can be traced," the city police official said.