Man held for posing as exporter and duping fish vendors

The investigating team from Sakinaka Police Station went through several accounts of fish traders and exporters from Surat and got in touch with the accused earlier this year and arrested him on Sunday from Surat.

Mumbai: A 41-year-old man was arrested from Surat in Gujarat for allegedly posing as a fish exporter and cheating several fish vendors of lakhs of rupees across Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh.

“We also found that the accused has previously been booked for a murder case and an assault on a policeman in Surat. We have also been able to find nine more victims of this conman in Mumbai, and some more across the state as well as a few in Andhra Pradesh,” said the officer. (Image for representation)

The accused has been identified as Imran Muhammed Hussain Qadri.

The complainant, Akash Kamble, a fish trader, approached the police in 2022 and said that he got in touch with a man named Mayur Shah from Surat after getting his number from a Google search, a police officer from Sakinaka Police Station said, adding, “Kamble placed his order and paid ₹3.13 lakh to Shah. However, the complainant did not receive the consignment, nor got back his money.”

“Qadri had a very professional-looking Facebook page, Google business profile as well as WhatsApp account through which he would communicate. While discussing a deal with the fish traders, he would provide proper pictures and rates of the types of fish he could provide them. He also did not disclose his real name to any of the victims,” added the officer.

Once the deal was struck, he would ask the customers to pay him an advance so that he could dispatch their goods, said the officer. He added that after the transaction was completed, Qadri would tell the buyer to expect delays in receiving the order as the truck bringing them had a punctured tyre or other glitches.

“After this communication, he would switch off his number and would change all his details, like name and number, of his business on Facebook and Google,” said the officer.

The investigating team from Sakinaka Police Station went through several accounts of fish traders and exporters from Surat and got in touch with the accused earlier this year and arrested him on Sunday from Surat. “We also found that the accused has previously been booked for a murder case and an assault on a policeman in Surat. We have also been able to find nine more victims of this conman in Mumbai, and some more across the state as well as a few in Andhra Pradesh,” said the officer.

Qadri was sent to judicial custody on Tuesday.