Three persons were arrested in Kolkata on Thursday night for allegedly running an online racket and duping people in Delhi with false promises of providing them with oxygen cylinders during the Covid-19 crisis earlier this year.
A team of Delhi police officers arrived in Kolkata on Friday to arrest the trio - Soumen Mandal, Sanu Nandi and Utpal Ghoshal - who were apparently involved in the case, an officer said.
The three were arrested from their homes in the Sarsuna and Haridevpur areas of southwest Kolkata and produced in a city court on Friday. Their custody was handed over to the Delhi police team on transit remand. “Delhi police said they had found that the money procured through cheating people by making false promises of supplying oxygen cylinders had been transferred to three bank accounts in Kolkata. The accounts belong to three persons,” said an officer in Kolkata police.
The incident apparently happened in May, when a Covid wave was at its peak and there were daily reports of patients dying in Delhi because of lack of oxygen. “People were so desperate to get oxygen cylinders to save the lives of their near and dear ones that most of them did not bother to verify the leads and transferred money into the accounts of people who claimed they could supply oxygen cylinders. Many of these people were fraudsters. This is one such case,” said an officer.
The trio allegedly duped people of more than Rs 40 lakh, an officer said.
When the second wave of Covid-19 had hit the country, social media was flooded with contact details of people who claimed they could help in getting oxygen cylinders.
At that time, Kolkata police had launched a special helpline number to report cases of fraud related to oxygen cylinders, following complaints of people being either duped with false assurances or being overcharged for a cylinder.
