Couple arrested for floating fake tender in name of Ministry of Small Scale Industries

New Delhi, Apr 4 (KNN) A couple was arrested by Delhi Police for cheating people by creating fake website of the Ministry of Small Scale Industries and floating a fake tender of Rs 100 crore.

The police came to know about the forgery only after one of the victims filed a police complaint after the tender kept getting delayed.

The man was arrested from Agra and his wife from Andhra Pradesh. The accused, identified as Tarun Gupta and Priyanka Rao, got married in 2012. They decided to con people to tide over their financial crisis.

On March 3, Anjani Kumar, a resident of Hyderabad, received an email from the ministry giving an offer to participate in the tender for an estimated value of Rs. 100 crores. Kumar then deposited Rs 9.72 lakh as earnest money in different bank accounts. Kumar got suspicious when the tender kept getting delayed. He called up the ministry of skill development office in Delhi and was told that no such tender process was on. He then lodged a police case.

"A team of ASI Onkar Singh, constable Yogesh and others, under supervision of Saket SHO inspector Ranbir Singh, checked the bank account details and Rao's name cropped up. Records revealed that Rao had transferred the money to other accounts, some of which belonged to her relatives," said Surender Kumar, additional DCP (south).

It also came to notice that Gupta had bought a Tata Safari in Vaishali, Ghaziabad and paid for it online. Gupta was traced in Agra and he was arrested after a raid. Cops recovered Rs 8 lakh from his possession.

"During interrogation, Gupta said that his wife and he had cheated a dozen people in Hyderabad, Chennai and Bengaluru using the same modus operandi. He disclosed his wife's location in Andhra Pradesh after which she was arrested with the help of the state police," said a police official.

During interrogation, accused Tarun Gupta confessed his involvement in the crime and the police recovered Rs 8 lakh from them. (KNN Bureau)