A 29-year-old man was arrested for allegedly impersonating a senior bureaucrat and duping people of crores of rupees on the pretext of procuring licences for petrol pumps, gas agencies and house allotments, police said on Wednesday.
DCP (Crime Branch) Ram Gopal Naik said that the accused, Sampath Kumar Surappagari, a resident of Ammapur in Telangana’s Mehboobnagar, was arrested on Tuesday from a hotel in city’s Mahipalpur.
The police said that in February 2019, Malipaddi Sandeep, a resident of Hyderabad, told them that he was approached by one K. Ramaswamy, who said his nephew Surappagari is a senior bureaucrat and is posted in New Delhi. “He also told Mr. Sandeep that Surappagari could get licences approved for Bharat Petroleum and Bharat Gas. Mr. Sandeep was asked to pay ₹1.8 crore for the licences. He was also told to come to Delhi to apply for the licences,” Mr. Naik said.
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Subsequently, the accused met the victim in Delhi and latter transferred ₹1.40 crore to the accused’s bank account. Surappagari allegedly asked him to give ₹40 lakh in cash to Ramaswamy in Hyderabad in the first week of July, 2017. the victim was assured that he would get the licences by the end of August 2017.
However, from October 2018, the accused started telling Mr. Sandeep over phone that the work could not be completed and issued cheques to the victim. When the cheques bounced, the victim contacted Surappagari. The accused then threatened him that if he complained to the police, he would send his PSO and get him killed.
During interrogation, the accused told the police that he had come to Delhi to prepare for civil services examination. However, he could not pass the exam and started publishing a daily newspaper from Karol Bagh. The accused was earlier arrested thrice in Hyderabad.
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