KRISHNAGIRI: Ten persons near Hosur were arrested for cheating a woman in a treasure hunt scam on Sunday night. The woman lost Rs 7 lakh.The accused have been identified as A Sasikumar (61), N Sasikumar (48), A Sankar Ganesh (43), P Selvaraj (61) of Tiruppur, B Prabhakar (37) of Dindigul, N Rajkumar (41) of Salem, S Natarajan (48) and P Muthukumaravel (48) of Cuddalore, S Prakash Gupta (68) of Andhra Pradesh and K Lakshmikanth (58) of Bengaluru.
Police said, “The complainant K Radhamma (46) of Santhapuram in Hosur was allegedly approached by two persons on April 23, when she was at the Anjaneyar temple near her home. They told her that there is a “treasure” near her house and they would help her retrieve it by performing a pooja.
Radhamma denied the offer and returned home, but that night the miscreants approached her family again and performed some rituals and had allegedly retrieved two “gold coins” from a pot behind her house in front of her husband.
The couple believed this and the miscreants asked them to pay Rs 10 lakh. Initially they offered Rs 3 lakh and couple were asked to do pooja for a week to get a pot of gold coins.
On April 28, the accused conducted another pooja, but allegedly said that God did not grant permission to take the pot. Over the course of the next four days, the couple paid them Rs 4 lakh in various instalments”
On Saturday, when Radhamma tested the two gold coins, they found that it was brass. When the couple inquired about this with the accused, they handed over a suitcase stating that it contains Rs 1.5 crore and added that after another pooja, they can buy the gold coin pot. When Radhamma opened the suitcase, it was filled with paper, police added.
Radhamma lodged a complaint with Nallur police on Sunday and a case was booked against the 10 accused under BNS sections 61 (2) and 318 (4).