Jabalpur: 3 held for duping people on pretext of providing ‘VIP phone numbers’

Jabalpur (Madhya Pradesh): The police arrested three persons from the city for allegedly duping people on the promise of providing VIP mobile phone numbers of leading telecom companies, an official said.

The arrested accused were identified as Ashok Teerthani, a resident of Bharkaripur, Shubham Rai, a resident of Ukhari and Dilip Kukreja, a resident of Bel Bagh from the city.

The action was taken following a complaint lodged in February this year. The complainant told police that he had received an offer of a VIP number of the Airtel company on his mobile. He clicked on the link of the offer, after some time he received a call from Mumbai and he was asked to pay Rs 49,000 to get ‘9000000000’ number.

After that the victim had transferred the offer price of Rs 41,000 in a given bank account. Since then the seller’s number became out of reach. The police started an investigation on the basis of the transaction and arrested Ashok Teerthani. During interrogation, Ashok told police that he had deposited money in his account on the behest of Shubham Rai and Dilip Kukreja.

After that the police interrogated all three of them, they told police that they had cheated around 500 people of around Rs 3 crores in the last 3 years. The police also seized seven ATM cards, 52 bank passbooks, one scooty and eight mobiles from the possession of the accused.

The police, however, started a search operation to nab Ravi Mishra, a resident of Mumbai who is the mastermind of the gang. Ravi used to call people on the pretext of providing VIP numbers after which this money was transferred to the bank accounts.

Published on: Thursday, March 17, 2022, 04:54 PM IST