The dupe shadow over the city’s tech hub has grown a mile with employees of a Sector V firm crying foul over unpaid salaries and missing managers.

Over 700 employees and 228 trainees of Assurgent Technology Solutions Pvt. Ltd have complained that they were recruited through campus placements, made to pay Rs 1 lakh as security deposit, but then denied their dues.

The tech firm set up in 2005, dealing with software development, sales management and KPO, is now shut and its managers are absconding.

Officers of Bidhannagar East police station contacted their counterparts in Durgapur, where similar complaints had been registered against the branch office of Assurgent Technology. Sreejan Chatterjee, the branch in-charge of the Durgapur office, was arrested late on Thursday.

This comes within months of Infogen Global, a dud IT firm based in Sector V, going bust after duping hundreds of employees and trainees of their Rs 50,000 security deposit.

The employees of Assurgent Technology Solutions, promised a monthly salary of Rs 13,000, had not been paid for the past four months. Some employees said the company managers would cite the recession whenever they were asked about payment of salaries and stipends.

The trainees began their stint in January 2009, but were made to sit idle from March. “The company officials said they would inform us when the training would resume, but no one got in touch with us. We didn’t even receive the Rs 2,000 monthly stipend we were promised when we joined,” said trainee Mohammad Sarvar Pervez, 22.

This week, some employees and trainees pressed the panic button when they found the office behind Infinity building locked, with no officials in sight. A complaint was lodged with the Sector V outpost of Bidhannagar East police station. Assurgent trainees and employees went to Writers’ Buildings on Friday to try and present their case to the government, but were denied entry.

An official of Nabadiganta Industrial Township Authority said they were probing the company’s track record.