Hyderabad: Four arrested for cheating people on pretext of loans

Four accused have been arrested for cheating people on the pretext of providing loans by impersonating themselves as staff of reputed loan companies, police said. The accused have been identified as Tarun Ojha, Guru Charan Singh, Yogendra Singh Badoria and Shahadat Ansari, police said on Friday.

According to the police, 17 mobile phones, seven laptops and one CPU which were being used for cheating people, have been also recovered from the accused.

Detailing the incident, Sneha Mehra Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP), Crime branch said, "On December 29, 2022, we received a complaint from a senior citizen of Hyderabad, informing that he had been looking for a loan to construct a house and browsed online when he received a call on behalf of Reliance Finance Company, from a person who introduced himself as Abhinav, an executive of Reliance Capital and offered him a loan".

"Initially, he was informed that the entire process of sanctioning a loan will be free. But after a few days, the accused collected a total of Rs 30 lakh from the victim towards various charges such as registration fees, processing fees, contingency development charges, GST, income tax, etc., and also sent him loan approval letters" DCP Sneha added.

After realising that the accused had sent him fake loan approval letters, the senior citizen lodged a complaint with Cyber Crime Police in December 2022, based on which a case was registered. The police said that the accused used to contact innocent loan seekers by offering them to provide loans with lower interest. They were also running a loan fraud call centre in the name of Magic Trip India at Govindpuri, Delhi. They used to cheat loan seekers from across India by collecting registration fees, processing fees, GST, income tax, etc., for their loan process by sending fake loan-approved letters.

"It is estimated that they had cheated as many as 27 victims to the tune of Rs 5 crore", police added.

Further, other accused identified as Naveen Kumar, Premveer Singh, Jyothi Kumari, Janvi Tiwari, Kanchn, Anayda, Amit Singh Fatyal, Somya, Reema and Mamatha Kumari have also been served notices for cheating people on the pretext of providing loans.Further investigations are underway.

Also Read: Rahul Gandhi's disqualification: Congress to observe "black day" in Wayanad