The Shahu Nagar police in Central Mumbai arrested a 51-year-old man from Kolkata whose bank account has been allegedly used to swindle a woman in Mumbai of `76,000 that she deposited after she was made to believe that that she would get a big loan within 12 hours.
The Shahu Nagar police said the accused Ashok Gupta is born and brought up in Kolkata and claims that he had nothing to do with the cheating case. In May 2012, the victim Zarina Sheikh from Dharavi, urgently required a loan for personal reasons and while browsing through a Hindi newspaper, she was drawn by an advertisement by Amba Finance. The company had promised a loan of `3 lakh with minimal interest within a period of 12 hours.
Ms Sheikh called on the phone number in the advertisement and the caller asked her to send some documents required to clear the loan. After some days, she was informed that her loan has been cleared and she would have to pay a small commission in advance to get the loan. In installments, Sheikh was made to pay `76,000 to the bank account owned by Gupta, but she never got the loan.
Finally, on October 3 last year, Sheikh approached the Shahu Nagar police station and registered a cheating case under Section 420 of the Indian Penal Code. “The address given in the newspaper advertisement by Amba Finance was fake and the cellphone number that Ms Sheikh contacted was registered under a false name. However, the bank account was in the name of the accused Gupta. We nabbed him from his residence in Garden Reach,” said sub-inspector, Chandrashekhar Gaikwad.
“Gupta claims that he had given his ATM card to a known person and he might have misused it to get the ill-gotten money. Presently, we are not inclined to believe his version and need to crosscheck it. Gupta was arrested on July 18 from his residence and was remanded to police custody for a day by a court on Sunday,” added Mr Gaikwad.