Bhubaneswar, April 12: Officials of the crime branch’s economic offence wing today arrested a person for allegedly cheating over 1,000 people of cash worth around Rs 4.5 crore.
The accused, along with some of his acquaintances, had promised the victims to take their lands on rent for erecting Internet towers and signed an agreement with them. According to the accord, the landowners had to pay Rs 45,000, but later, these people did not carry out their project and closed the company.
Deputy inspector general of crime branch Rajesh Kumar said Orissa High Court had ordered them to inquire into the matter in December following which they registered a case on December 12 last year. Investigating the matter, the crime branch officials arrested Dillip Kumar Das, 40, of Kamakhya Nagar in Dhenkanal district from his village. An official said Dillip was one of the directors of an Internet service provider company called Immobile Vision and Services Private Limited with its head office in Ranchi. The company had opened its branch office at Jhanjiri Mangala in Cuttack in 2010. While one Prakash Jha was the company’s managing director staying in Ranchi, Dillip and another director Satya Prakash Mohanty of Jagatsinghpur were operating the business from here.
“They contacted residents of Puri, Khurda, Dhenkanal, Angul, Cuttack, Balasore and Mayurbhanj to take their lands on rent to erect the Internet towers. They promised to pay Rs 2,500 as land rent and Rs 2,700 as maintenance charge of the towers to the landowners every month. Accordingly, the company signed agreements with these people and collected Rs 45,000 from each of them,” said Kumar.