Mumbai The Saki Naka police have arrested two accused wanted since March last year in connection with a job racket and duping job aspirants of ₹65.35 lakhs.
According to the Saki Naka police, the accused had opened up a placement agency called Far East Pvt Ltd in Sakinaka in December last year. From then to March 2021, the four accused collected a total of ₹65.35 lakh from various placement agents, promising to get their clients well-paying overseas jobs. Then, the accused suddenly shut shop, switched off all their mobile phones and vanished.
In June this year, the police had traced and arrested two of the four – Sachin Joshi (31) and Sudhanshu Shekhar (39), charging them with cheating. Two others, Asgar Ali (36) and Indrajeet Sonkar (45), were still on the run.
“We had been on their trail ever since and last week, we received information that Ali, who had fled to Nepal, was coming to Navi Mumbai to start another placement agency. Accordingly, we obtained his current number through informants and on Sunday traced him to Koparkhairane. His arrest was followed by Sonkar’s arrest from Kandivali,” said assistant police inspector Arjun Kudale, Saki Naka police station.
Kudale added that their interrogation also revealed the involvement of a fifth accused, a woman named Kusum Keer (27), who was brought in for questioning on Tuesday. However, due to some medical issues, she was not arrested and released after being issued a notice.
“The accused have been running similar rackets in different areas of Maharashtra for years. They have cases registered against them with the Aarey and Kasturba Marg police stations in Mumbai and the Tulinj police station in Nalasopara. They would set up legitimate, registered placement agencies, gather clients through freelance placement agents and decamp once they had collected a significant amount,” said Kudale.
He added that they worked as freelance recruitment agents in the past and got to know each other through their work, after which they hit upon this idea and started the racket together.
Ali and Sonkar have been remanded to police custody till Wednesday, while Joshi and Shekhar are currently in judicial custody. The police are now trying to recover the swindled money and find out if there are any others involved in the racket.