HYDERABAD: It was a get-rich-quick operation that went horribly wrong for two persons and their six accomplices who tried to trick their victim of `60 lakh cash in Saroornagar here on Tuesday.
The victim, Thalluri Venkateshwar Rao, was offered 1.5 kg gold for a throwaway price of Rs 60 lakh. Rao, who thought it was a dream bargain, agreed. According to Rachakonda Police Commissioner Mahesh Bhagawat, the police arrested the mastermind Mahesh, the attention diversion expert and SIM card providers after the victim approached the Saroornagar and LB Nagar Special Operations Team (SOT) on Tuesday.
Venkateshwar is a real estate agent who happened to know Mahesh for the last six months. Recently, a man named Riyaz from Warangal got in touch with Mahesh and told him that he knew an attention diversion gang that was looking for a major operation and asked whether Mahesh would help them.
Mahesh then told Riyaz about Venkateshwar and after Riyaz said it was fine with him, Mahesh then approached Venkateshwar, with a spiel that about 1.5 kg of gold was available with one of his friends at a throwaway price and if he would be interested in purchasing it, to which he readily agreed.
Then the two accused Kanakaraju and Prasanna went to the victim’s house in Saroornagar. There, they examined the cash offered by the victim and in the process, his attention was diverted. Meanwhile, the accused substituted the genuine cash with coloured paper bundles in the victim’s suitcase and transferred the genuine cash into his suitcase. Then the duo took their suitcase and went out saying that they would return with the customer who wanted to sell the gold.
When they did not return even after half-an-hour, the victim got suspicious and opened his suitcase to see wads of coloured paper. Crying foul, he rushed to the police who followed the mobile location with which Mahesh was in contact with the victim and arrested all eight persons including SIM card providers. One more person is on the run.