3 held for selling fake gold to Hyd businessman for Rs. 17 Lakh

Hyderabad: Three people were arrested on 24 April for selling fake gold and Rs. 15 lakhs cash was seized from their possession. On 21 April, the Chandrayangutta police received a complaint from K. Vijay Kumar who operates an online bus ticket booking business. He said that in April he had booked a bus ticket for a man and given him his visiting card. Later, the stranger called Mr. Kumar claiming that he had found gold while digging a land at Mysore and asked him to purchase it

On 14 March, the man came to Katta Maisamma temple in MM colony, Bandlaguda, with gold ornaments and contacted Mr. Kumar. The former showed the gold ornaments to the latter and even gave him four gold pieces so he could verify their authenticity.

The complainant immediately went to a gold shop in the locality who confirmed that it was real gold. Mr. Kumar then made a deal to purchase the gold for Rs. 17 lakhs. However, 10 days later when he took the gold to make new ornaments he found out that it was fake gold.

The police arrested Shivaiah (30) and Tirupathayya (25) of Kolar district in Karnataka and B. Indraju (27) of Chittoor, Andhra Pradesh, on Saturday. They found that the accused men made fake ornaments using small gold-coated bearing metal balls. At the same time, they also made some real gold balls of the same size. They collected visiting cards from hotels, restaurants, and travel agencies and trapped innocent people by luring them with real gold and then selling them fake gold for large sums of money.