2 booked for duping car customers

Our Correspondent

Mandi Ahmedgarh, May 16

The police have booked two persons under Section 419, 420 and 120 B of the IPC and Section 66 of the Information and Technology Act 2000 for allegedly duping innocent persons under the guise of offering them vehicles at lower prices. They prepared fake IDs on famous online marketing sites to lure customers.

The accused have been identified as Gurmukh Singh of Thulliwal village in Barnala district and an unknown person maintaining Paytm number 8094179251.

The case was registered on the instructions of the Sangrur SSP Mandeep Singh Sidhu after the Assistant Inspector General of Police (Cyber Crime) advised him to get the complaint probed by the Cyber Investigation and Technical Support Unit of the district police. No arrest has been made in the case.

Subhash Verma of the Vishwakarma Mandir area on the Dehliz road had inserted an advertisement on OLX for the sale of his Swift car (PB 13 AV 83820 for a price of Rs 6,90,000 on February 22. After some days, he received a call from Gurmukh Singh of Thulliwal village in Barnala district, who introduced himself as a car dealer. Gurmukh offered to sell the vehicle provided he was given Rs 5,000 as commission. He took from Verma the copies of his Aadhaar card, the first page of his bank account, and the registration card of the vehicle.

The copies of Verma’s documents were later used for preparing fake IDs on OLX and prompting potential car customers to deposit a token amount in the Paytm account number 8094179251.

Verma was upset when he started receiving calls from customers, who informed him that they had transferred the token amount as an advance for the purchase of the said car, at a price much lower than that offered by him in the original advertisement. Though a complete list of such persons was yet to be prepared, Sukhwinder Singh of Bhoora village, Gulshan Kumar of Sunami Gate, Sangrur, were among those who contacted Verma repeatedly for the sale of his car at a price of about Rs 5 lakh, according to the fake advertisement on OLX.

The police had allowed Gurmukh Singh to join investigation before registering a case. Gurmukh expressed ignorance about the identification of persons who misused the documents for preparing fake IDs and duping customers by taking the token money.

Harjinder Singh, SHO, said a probe had been initiated to ascertain the identity of the accused as also their exact modus operandi.