2 on run for 4 years arrested for duping 200 Delhi residents o ₹7crore
The son was arrested from Pune in Maharashtra, and his interrogation led to the arrest of his father from Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh
The Delhi Police crime branch on Friday said they had arrested a man, who is in his late 50s, and his 33-year-old son, who were absconding for the past four years after duping more than 200 residents of Goyla Dairy near Dwarka in southwest Delhi of ₹7 crore through a bogus investment scheme.
The son was arrested from Pune in Maharashtra, and his interrogation led to the arrest of his father from Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh, police said, adding that both suspects were declared proclaimed offenders (POs) and ₹25,000 cash reward was declared against each of them.
The arrested father-son duo had tricked their victims into investing money into a Ponzi scheme that promised high interest returns, police said. They paid interest returns to some of the investors, further tricking them and other people into investing more money in the scheme, said police. When the father-son duo accumulated around ₹7 crore from more than 200 investors, they disposed of their movable and immovable property, destroyed their cellphones and SIM cards, and fled the city, police said. Since the cheating amount was more than ₹2 crore, a case of criminal breach of trust, cheating, and criminal conspiracy was registered at the economic offences wing (EOW) under Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 406,420 and 120B, crime branch officers said.
Deputy commissioner of police (crime) Satish Kumar said that the crime branch’s northern range-2 team recently received information that the father-son duo, who were declared proclaimed offenders on February 3 last year, had taken shelter somewhere in Pune. The team reached Pune to locate the suspects. The team members found the location of 33-year-old Prasun Pandey and arrested him from his rented accommodation in Pristine City, Phase 1, Bakori in Pune.
“We interrogated Prasun, and he disclosed that his father, Ravinder Kumar Pandey, was living in Lucknow. Accordingly, another team went to Lucknow and arrested Ravinder. Ravinder was born in Lucknow and came to Delhi in search of a job. He did some small businesses for livelihood. Prasun holds a BBA degree. Ravinder was previously arrested under the Gangster Act in UP, where he was assisting his associates who were criminals. In 2017, Ravinder and his two sons were arrested in a case of hurt and manhandling in Delhi’s Chhawla,” added the DCP.