CHENNAI: The Central Crime Branch (CCB) has arrested a man who allegedly posed as an IAS officer and cheated more than 2,300 people by collecting Rs five crore after promising to get them houses in slum clearance board tenements and issuing fake allotment orders to them. Based on a complaint by one R Udaya Baskar, 44 of Ekattuthangal, police arrested D Jagadish alias Ravikumar, 33 of Thiruvarur. Police said Udaya was introduced to Ravikumar, who pretended to be working as an officer at the Secretariat through a common friend Sardar Jebasingh.
Ravikumar had promised Udaya Baskar to provide him a house at Semmanchery through the slum clearance board. Believing this, Udaya had convinced his family members and other friends also to buy similar houses and collected `13.5 lakh from 40 persons and handed it over to Ravikumar in 2015. Ravikumar allegedly prepared fake allotment orders and handed them over to Udaya Baskar and his friends, a police officer said.
When Udaya Baskar and others found them to be fake orders they approached Ravikumar who promised to get the original documents in a few months, but later failed to respond to their phone calls. Further inquiries revealed that Ravikumar had collected money from 2,260 other persons promising them the same deal.
“He posed as an IAS officer working at the Secretariat and travelled in a car with a beacon light to make the customers believe. He collected the money and would make them come to a wedding hall where he would distribute the fake allotment orders and house keys. This happened in 2016,” the police officer said. Ravikumar was remanded to judicial custody on Friday.
HR&CE official booked on sexual harassment charge
Chennai: An official of the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments department has been booked on charges of sexual harassment based on a complaint filed by a woman. Chandrasekaran, 55, is the executive officer in charge of Marundeeswarar temple at Tiruvanmiyur and Ashtalakshmi temple at Besant Nagar. The complaint alleges he has been sexually harassing the woman after she approached him seeking details of a tender. Police said she has not submitted any proof yet.
Snatchers pose as cops, trick women into parting with gold chain
Chennai: Confidence tricksters took away a 11-sovereign gold chain from a retired BSNL employee at Adyar here on Thursday night. Mangalam was walking towards her house on L B Road, when two bike-borne men introduced themselves as cops and cautioned her about chain snatchers. The men offered to pack the chain in a paper and give it to her. While doing so, they replaced the chain with a stone. It was only after she reached home she realised the men had taken away her chain.