SAMBALPUR: Taking advantage of Covid-19 pandemic, a 23-year-old youth of New Delhi had duped a local businessman of Rs 28 lakh on the pretext of supplying face masks. He was arrested by Sambalpur police from Faridabad in Haryana.The accused, Jatin Sehgal, is a resident of Jain Nagar at Rohini in New Delhi. Police said, he duped Manoj Kumar Barado (36) of Sunapali by taking online order for face mask supply which he did not. Manoj is into import and export business. The fraud took place last year in May.
Addressing mediapersons here on Friday, Northern Range IG Narasingha Bhol said the accused claimed that he ran a company called LED Rental and had created a fake Facebook profile. His company’s office address was mentioned as Gurgaon. Though he has studied only up to class IX, Jatin is fluent in English.
During lockdown, Jatin had posted an advertisement for face masks on the fake Facebook profile. Manoj, came across the advertisement and contacted him. He expressed his willingness to buy face mask in bulk and deposited Rs 3 lakh in an account provided by the accused.
Subsequently, Jatin prepared a false invoice of DHL Express courier to win the victim’s confidence and assured him that he would supply the face masks from a firm in Malaysia through inter-mediatory companies in Oman, Dubai and Muscat.Convinced with the accused’s assurances, Manoj further deposited Rs 25 lakh through PhonePe and other accounts provided by Jatin for 11,500 masks. However after receiving the amount, the accused switched off his mobile phone.
The victim lodged a complaint with Cyber police on June 16, 2020 following which a special squad was formed for investigation. Recently, the team camped in Delhi for a week and raided different places. The accused was nabbed from Faridabad on March 23, Bhola said. Police seized mobile phones, 10 SIM cards, ATM cards of different banks and Rs 10 lakh from the accused. Two bank accounts of Jatin have been frozen and further investigation is underway, the IG added. The accused has been booked under sections 419, 420, 465, 467, 468, 471 of the IPC besides section 66 (C) /66(D) of the IT Act.