PALGHAR: Two persons have been arrested in Maharashtra's Palghar district in connection with an inter- state racket of duping people under the pretext of installing mobile phone towers on their land, police said on Tuesday.
Accessories worth Rs 10 lakh, including 25 ATM cards of different banks, a PAN card, 33 cheque books, two laptops, eight SIM cards, some memory cards and a car were seized from the accused, senior police inspector Vilas Chowgule said.
The two men, Ajay Maheshnath Pandit, hailing from Uttar Pradesh, and Rafique Nannushah Pasha Shaikh, a resident of Karnataka, were nabbed from a tea shop in Vasai area of Palghar on Sunday evening, he said.
Pandit and his youngerbrother allegedly operated a bogus call centre in Salt Lake locality of Kolkata and lured poor people by promising them money if they gave their land on rent for setting up mobile phone towers.
They took advance payments from the victims and also used their PAN, Aadhaar cards and other documents to open bank accounts and obtain mobile SIM cards for illegal transactions.
The victims would later realise that they were cheated, the official said.
During their interrogation, the police came across at least four criminal offences registered against the accused in this connection in Bhandara district of Maharashtra, Chhindwara in Madhya Pradesh, Hassan in Karnataka and Cuttack in Odisha, he said.
The accused would be handed over to the Bhandara police for further action, he added.