Wayanad: The cyber cell of the Wayanad Police arrested two persons of a Delhi-based online job racket for defrauding a Kerala woman of Rs 5 lakh by promising a job at a hospital in Dubai.
New Delhi native Balraj Kumar Varma, 43, and Bihar native Ravikanth Kumar, 33, were arrested in the national capital and brought to Kerala on Friday.
The racketeers had siphoned off the amount from a Pulpalli native in March this year. She filed a complaint after the accused refused to answer her calls.
The police said the racketeers gathered the woman's personal details from an online job portal before contacting her. They made her register on a fake portal to gain her confidence and began demanding money at various stages citing different procedural needs.
An officer with the cyber wing told Onmanorama that they tracked the complainant's payments to bank accounts in Bihar and learned that the SIM cards were registered at Delhi. “Our team reached New Delhi a week ago. We discovered that the fraudsters had forged documents to open bank accounts and to source the SIM cards,” the officer said.
Techie Ravikanth
The arrest of Balraj, who had forged the documents and sourced the SIM cards, led to Ravikanth, who hold an MCA degree and is understood to be a computer expert. Police collected the source codes of the fake website, details of server on which the job portal was hosted, bank account details, SIM cards, passbooks, cheque books and laptops from the accused.
The duo was produced at the Tis Hazari Court in New Delhi before the Kerala Police gained custody with a transit warrant. They were produced before the Chief Judicial Magistrate Court, Kalpetta and remanded to judicial custody for 14 days.
The investigation was held under the supervision of Wayanad District Police Chief Padam Singh and led by district cyber crime police inspector Shaju Joseph. Senior civil police officers KA Abdul Salam and Abdul Shukkur and civil police officers Jeason George and Rijo Fernandus were part of the team.
SP warns job aspirants
SP Padam Singh has urged job aspirants to ensure the veracity job portals before applying.
“No responsible institution will demand ‘One Time Passwords’ (OTPs), banking details of the individuals and huge sums as registration fees,” he said in a press release.
The senior officer has urged youngsters who fell in the trap of job fraud to register complaints without delay either by dialling the crime registration number ‘1930’ or filing a complaint on www.cybercrime.gov.in
