How a gang running a Railway recruitment scam cheated students of Rs. 10 cr

Hyderabad: The special operations team, Rachakonda, along with the Jawaharnagar police arrested two persons and busted a Rs. 10 crore Railway recruitment racket.

The police found that the kingpin behind the racket, Ponnala Bhaskar of Kharkhana in Secunderabad, had defrauded over 100 aspirants by promising them jobs in the Railways without any examination.

The two arrested persons have been identified as Ponnala Bhaskar (57) and Konda Ritesh Kumar (41). The police recovered cash Rs. 9 lakh, two cars, and fake documents from them. Six others – Ashok Singal, Devendar Mishra, and A.K Saxena from Delhi, Deepka Sinha from Guwhati, Kashipally Ravindra from Hyderabad, and Bharkath Ali from Mumbai – are absconding.

The gang was operating in Hyderabad, Delhi, Chennai, West Bengal, and other states.

Bhaskar was living at Tagore Garden in Tatapur, Delhi. He knew some people working in the Railway Recruitment board so he hatched a plan to dupe young students with false promises of providing jobs in the Railways and the Food Corporation of India (FCI). He collected lakhs of rupees from the students as an advance to process their applications. The gang mainly targeted poor students from villages.

Bhaskar and his associates collected the original education certificates of the candidates and issued fake offer letters, medical memos, and appointment orders. The gang collected large sums of money from the job aspirants. However, instead of providing jobs to the candidates, the gang escaped from Delhi and switched off their mobile phones.

The candidates approached the Delhi police and filed a complaint against the gang. To escape the police, Bhaskar moved to Mumbai. He often travelled to Hyderabad.

Later, with the help of his friends, he got in touch with 16 students and promised to get them jobs in Railways and FCI. The students were mostly from Jawaharnagar, Karimanagar, and Hyderabad city. Bhaskar collected about Rs. 93.50 lakh from them and issued fake appointment orders and ID cards. Bhaskar and his associates had collected around Rs. 10 crore from students from Hyderabad, Delhi, Chennai, and West Bengal.

Based on a complaint filed at the Jawaharnagar police station, the police arrested Bhaskar in Secunderabad. During interrogation, he confessed to cheating people by preparing fake offer letters and giving them to students for lakhs of rupees.

He had also cheated people by asking them for money in the guise of clearing a large money transfer that he claimed was stuck with the RBI for Customs clearance. He was involved in a rice pulling racket.