TIRUCHY: Buy/Sell/Rent anything, reads the Quikr.com catchline. If it is your property, that is. That subtext was lost on three persons who put up a whole bunch of colleges in Perambalur for sale on the online classified advert website without the knowledge of the owner.
All three, based in Chennai, claimed they were pulling a prank by putting the Dhanalaxmi Group of colleges in Perambalur up for sale for a ‘negotiable’ `700 crore, but the owner was not amused.
While the brain behind the ‘prank’, Pattabiraman (60), a resident of Chennai who hails from Puducherry is on the run, two of his accomplices — V Murugan (34) and K Kathiravan (27) of Moulivakkam in Chennai — were rounded up by the police late on Friday.
When an aghast Dhanalaxmi Srinivasan group finance administrator R Rajasekaran noticed the advertisement dated November 9 that his group’s engineering, medical and technology colleges were up for sale, he immediately brought it to the notice of the management.
Sources said the advertisement was posted by Murugan and Kathiravan with Pattabiraman as the contact person.
Subsequently, the college authorities approached the District Crime Branch (DCB) police on November 10 and Rajasekaran lodged a formal complaint.
The police registered a case on November 14 under Section 66 A (b) of the IT Act, 2000, and IPC Section 506 (1). Soon after the complaint, Quikr deleted the advertisement.
“With the help of cyber crime personnel we found that the advert was posted from Abhi Internet Centre in Moulivakkam in Chennai on November 5. The centre is owned by two of the accused, Murugan and Kathiravan,” DCB inspector Periyannan told Express.