Seven persons of a call centre in New Town near Eco Park were arrested after Salt Lake police conducted a raid at the office on Wednesday night.
The arrested persons would allegedly lure people with the promise of high returns if they let them use their terrace to erect cellphone towers, an officer of Bidhannagar commissionerate said.
The officer said they had received information that a call centre that was involved in suspicious activities was operating from a rented office on the sixth floor of Astra Tower a few days back.
The cops managed to arrest Pratap Biswas, the manager of the call centre but the owners escaped. “The persons were posing as representatives of different mobile and broadband network service providers. They would call people and say their terrace had been chosen to set up a mobile tower, for which they would get Rs 20 lakh and a monthly rent of Rs 25,000 to Rs 30,000,” said the officer.
Any one who agreed to take the offer, they would be asked to pay a processing fee ranging from Rs 25,000 to Rs 45,000, the officer said.
“Once the victims paid the initial amount, they would be asked to deposit another Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh as licence fee,” the officer said.
As soon as the payment was made to the account numbers provided by the callers, the callers would snap all ties with the person.
“When we raided the call centre we found that at least seven callers were making such calls,” the officer added.
All seven who were arrested were produced before a court in Salt Lane that sent five of them to judicial custody while two were sent to police custody.
The cops have seized as many as 10 cellphones, a laptop, debit cards and several documents containing the names and phone numbers of people from various districts as well as states.
