The central crime branch of the city police has busted a gang of job racketeers who cheated marine engineering graduates to the tune of lakhs of rupees after promising them lucrative jobs. The kingpin of the gang has been arrested while his accomplices are on the run.
Sources with the CCB said the suspects Sudhir Babu (25), a native of Andhra Pradesh, and Bharat Kumar (28) from Chennai, who are both marine engineering graduates, met while working in a shipping firm in Dehradun in 2011. The duo quit their jobs a year later to start their own job consultancy firm in Chennai.
“They set up an agency called Merchant Navy Consultancy in Pallavaram in mid-2012 and published advertisements calling for fresh marine engineering graduates. Many youngsters approached them and the culprits promised them jobs after collecting between Rs. 50,000 and Rs. 1 lakh per person,” said an investigating officer.
Sudhir and Bharat operated along with Ajay Kumar, who runs an agency called Seven Stars Shipping Managements in Delhi and issued fake appointment orders and voyage visas for the victims after cheating 17 persons to the tune of over Rs. 50 lakh, the officer added.
The youths attempted to contact the suspects after they realised that the jobs were non-existent, but the men went incommunicado and closed their Pallavaram office before fleeing the State. Following this, some of the victims approached the office of the Commissioner of Police and the compliant was taken up for probe by the CCB’s Anti-job racket team.
Following specific information that Sudhir Babu was visiting his native village near Chintalapudi town in Andhra Pradesh on Sunday evening, a team rushed there and apprehended him.
He was brought to Chennai on Monday and remanded to judicial custody. A hunt is on for Babu’s accomplices, sources added.