Chandigarh: Fake contractor dupes 450 people of Rs 4 crore
Chandigarh, May 21
A fake contractor has been arrested by the UT police for allegedly cheating around 450 people by making false promises of employment on contract. The accused, identified as Seemel of Mohali, and his supervisor Rohi have been arrested.
Donated Rs 8 lakh gold chain to temple
The police said three cars, a motorcycle and Rs 1 lakh had been seized from Seemel. He owns a house in Sector 52 and another in Jhampur, Mohali. He donated a gold chain worth Rs 8 lakh at the Khatu Shyam temple in Rajasthan. The police also recovered a car, gold “kada”, a gold chain and Rs 2.15 lakh from Rohit. He bought a house in Jhampur, Mohali, from the ill-gotten money and mortgaged 50 gram gold with a finance firm.
The accused reportedly collected about Rs 4 crore from his victims. According to sources, Seemel had informed the victims that they were being hired for the horticulture wing of the Municipal Corporation (MC) on a contractual basis and the name of his company was Ultimate Manpower House Keeping.
The police said the accused started paying salaries to his victims from the corpus he made with the money collected from them. Soon, more job-seekers paid him money.
Today, the victims gathered outside the UT Secretariat and staged a protest. They later assembled at the Maloya police station to lodge a complaint. The police registered a case and arrested the accused.
This is the second such incident reported in the city this year. Earlier, a fake contractor, identified as Rajiv Kumar, had allegedly duped around 100 individuals of a total of Rs 60 lakh. The accused, posing as an NGO representative, promised cleaners to provide work at 10 schools in Chandigarh. Principals were assured by the contractor that cleaners would be provided without the need for payment directly from the schools.
The police said the cleaners were initially paid a meagre sum of Rs 10,000 per month. The contractor stopped paying them later.
The incident had led to the suspension of 10 school principals by the Education Department for dereliction of duty.
