COIMBATORE: A 31-year-old woman from Madurai was arrested in Coimbatore for cheating four women in a hostel of thousands of rupees in the pretext of arranging jobs. The suspect was identified as D Ramalakshmi of Anna Nagar in Madurai. She has completed M.Com and PGDCA and is well versed in photo editing software, said police. Police said she posed as an income tax officer to cheat them and was part of a gang that was involved in a series of job scandals.
According to police, G Karthiyayini (65) of Lakshmipuram in Tatabad who works as a warden in a women’s hostel at RS Puram. Ramalakshmi stayed in the hostel for four days in January. On January 21, she told Karthiyayini that she is an officer in the Income Tax department and is preparing for UPSC exams.
During the course of her stay, she showed the inmates several documents bearing income tax department seals, visiting cards of officers and assured them of securing jobs in Tamil Nadu Agricultural University and a private firm in the city.
On February 7, she handed over appointment letters to two women, including Karthiyayini, and collected Rs 20, 000 each from them. The same day, she collected Rs 13,000 each from two more women promising them part-time jobs and took away their laptops to get the software installed.
The women became suspicious as Ramalakshmi did not contact them again, and they approached the police on February 9 to trace her. Their inquiries revealed that all her credentials were fake and also that she had forged the appointment orders. Based on the victims’ complaint, police traced Ramalakshmi using her mobile phone signal and arrested her on Friday.
Meanwhile, on Friday, police received two more complaints against the suspect and her associates Vinod and Sangeetha who were staying in a rented house at Thennampalayam. In 2020, they cheated `4.4 lakh from a youth from Erode by issuing a fake job order.
A police officer who works in Chennai also was cheated by them, investigations revealed. However, the gang split a few months ago and Ramalakshmi was on her own. Police plan to take her under custody for interrogation. A special team has been formed to arrest her former associates.