BHOPAL: A 46-year-old man and his wife have been arrested by the Madhya Pradesh Police Cyber Cell for allegedly duping jobless youngsters under the guise of providing lucrative government jobs.
The couple identified as Sohail Ahmad and Zahira Rafique were arrested from Mumbai, after investigation into two cases lodged at Indore and Bhopal pointed to a fake job racket.
Using the website www.cds.gov.in and related e-mail IDs, Sohail, who is the son of a former professor of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) duped youngsters across the country by promising them jobs under various projects of Centre for Development Studies (CDS) — an autonomous body under the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD).
The jobs promised spanned from Project Manager to Field Investigators, which were also advertised in major national newspapers.
“Before 2016, Sohail was running a fertiliser business, but due to losses and mounting debt, he began duping unemployed people who transferred major sums into the bank accounts held by Sohail and his three wives,” said a Madhya Pradesh Cyber Cell police officer.
An Indore man who was duped by Sohail’s racket was made to deposit over Rs 17 lakh, while a Bhopal man deposited over Rs 1.5 lakh for application forms and training before recruitment, the police officer added.
Interrogations revealed that Sohail is also accused in similar cases in Cyberabad (Telangana) and Gandhinagar (Gujarat) and was out on bail after being arrested a few months back. As of now, investigations have revealed that Sohail has duped people of over `90 lakh, said police sources.