Jajpur, April 21: Kalinga Nagar police arrested a youth, who was allegedly duping a dozen of job seekers posing as an official of the Tata Steel, yesterday.

Three other members of the racket gave the police a slip during a raid on a hotel where they were conducting a fake job interview. The police said the members of the fake job racket allegedly cheated at least 14 persons by promising them jobs in Tata Steel.

The arrested person has been identified as Jatindra Behera of Karadagadia village in Jajpur district. Jatindra was the kingpin of the racket, who allegedly cheated the job seekers to the tune of Rs 1.54 lakh.

“A woman in our locality had offered me a job in Tata steel. She then brought me to Kalinga Nagar, the proposed steel plant site of the steel major, and introduced me to Jatindra, who said he was an official of Tata Steel’s human resources department. Jatindra asked me to pay Rs 1 lakh in two instalments and accordingly I had paid Rs 10,000. The rest was supposed to be paid after being posted in its Jamshedpur plant. We were assured that our first posting will be at Kalinga Nagar as a trainee and final posting would be in Jamsedpur after few months working as trainee,” said Sangitarani Sahu, a job aspirant.

Sahu was called to Kalinga Nagar to collect her appointment letter. As soon as she arrived at Duburi Chhak in Kalinga Nagar, she was asked to go to a hotel.

“I had certain doubts as to why he had called me to a hotel. Still, I went there only to find many women job seekers just like me. Later, the police raided the hotel and brought all of us to the police station,” she said.

Inspector of Kalinga Nagar police station Kishore Chandra Mund said they received information from some local residents that a hotel, which was closed for some days, reopened today and some women and three to four men were found there.