Raipur (Chhattisgarh): Taking a cue from the Bollywood flick 'Dream Girl' in which actor Ayushman Khurrana speaks over the phone to emotionally gullible men in a female voice, a gang from Chhattisgarh's Raipur operated similarly to trick people into investing in fake financial schemes.
Police in Raipur busted the inter-state gang of conmen, one of whom lured men by talking to them in a female voice to invest in fake bonus policies. A special team of Raipur police arrested two accused Rahul Verma and Shivam Sharma working in a private GST company based in Noida. During the interrogation, the two confessed that they, along with their accomplices Rahul Singh, Diwakar Verma, Puneet Sharma, Gaurav Yadav and Nischal Gupta, have duped gullible people of crores in the name of getting bonuses on insurance policies.
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The accused Rahul Singh and Diwakar Verma have also been arrested while Puneet Sharma, Gaurav Yadav and Nischal Gupta are absconding and are being traced. Rahul Verma alias Chandru in particular used to lure men by offering attractive investment plans in a female voice. The arrests were made following a complaint by one Manmohan Verma, a resident of Khamtrai, who claimed of being duped of Rs 49 lakh by the conmen.
The perpetrators reportedly called him from different numbers to invest the money for bonuses on his and his wife Geeta Verma's existing insurance policies. Verma first got a call on February 6, 2021, from a man calling himself an employee of Max Life Insurance and asking Verma to deposit Rs 32,700 which he did. Later, he got similar calls from the conmen to make the deposits amounting to a whopping Rs 49 lakh.
Following the complaint, a special police team including Raipur ASP Tarakeswar Patel and ASP Crime Abhishek Maheshwari on the instructions of SSP Prashant Agarwal nabbed the accused. A further investigation into the matter is underway. Raipur ASP Tarakeswar Patel said that the accused first collected information about different insurance policyholders in different states across the country. And later called them from different numbers to invest for “bonuses” on the insurances.
