Hyderabad: Three held for cheating government job aspirants

Malkajgiri: The Rachalonda Special Operations Team (SOT) along with Medipally police on Tuesday arrested three persons, including a couple, for cheating government job aspirants by promising the job seekers to provide jobs in the Indian Railways and the Hyderabad Metro Rail. The accused were identified as Surendra (37) and his wife Nagalakshmi (30), both from Guntur in Andhra Pradesh and D Suresh (33), a travel agent from Uppal, The accused persons collected nearly Rs 1.5 crore from the gullible job seekers and went absconding. The cops got a tip-off about the movements of the accused and they were nabbed. However, three others are still absconding and they are K Bhagya Lakshmi from Khammam, Alam from Secunderabad and Srinivas Rao from Khammam.

Mahesh Bhagwat, Rachakonda PC said, "The accused person Surendra earlier cheated his friends in Khammam by collecting money promising to sell them gold at cheaper rates in 2012. He was booked and has been absconding since then as he came to Hyderabad and was living in Uppal after changing his name as Putta Suresh Reddy. He also obtained a fake Aadhaar card, Pan card and Election card and opened bank accounts by using the fake name."

"While staying in the city, he started working as a cab driver and came in contact with Srinivas Rao and Alam, who promised jobs through back channels and asked the accused to identify interested candidates. Surendra in turn contacted his other friends in Uppal and informed them about the jobs without examination and took them to Rail Nilayam and introduced them to Srinivas Rao and Alam as Railway officers. About 20 job aspirants believed them and paid between Rs 5 lakh to Rs10 lakh each, added the PC. As students started pressuring Surendra for appointment letters, he approached the other accused Srinivas Rao and Alam and they issued fake appointment orders and went absconding.

When the victims approached Rail Nilayam they were informed that they were fake appointment letters. The victims then approached Surendra to get their money back, but the accused had invested all the money in multiple business ventures by then and as the victims kept on pressuring Surendra he fled from the city along with his wife. The victims then filed a complaint in October and since then the teams were on their toes to nab the culprits. Finally, when the accused and his wife came to their residence to collect their belongings, the cops who were on a lookout for them, nabbed the accused and were remanded to judicial custody and the hunt is on for other accused as well.