New Delhi: A senior citizen, who posed as a Colonel to cheat people on the pretext of providing them jobs in the Army and by offering flats in the Army Welfare Housing Organisation (AWHO), was arrested from a Punjab old-age home, police said on Sunday.
The accused, identified as Sitaram Gupta alias Sitaram Singla, 77, who was evading trial in a case of cheating and forgery registered against him in Delhi, was arrested on Saturday.
During interrogation after his arrest, Gupta revealed that he left his home, family members, and changed his appearance and mobile number to avoid his detection by law enforcement agencies, Delhi’s Deputy Commissioner of Police, Crime, Apooorva Gupta said.
Gupta was wanted in connection with a 2007 fraud case of offering a flat and a shop in the AWHO.
A case was registered against him on the complaint of Anil Nigam, a bank employee, who alleged that the accused had introduced himself as a Colonel rank officer posted in Delhi and offered a flat which was to be built by the AWHO.
As per the complaint, Gupta also offered him to book a shop under the same scheme and took Rs 56,000 from him.
Disappointed over not getting anything, Nigam filed a complaint at Vivek Vihar Police Station, and a case was registered there under relevant sections of cheating and forgery. After the investigation, the accused was arrested and later released on bail by the court.
However, Gupta jumped bail and started living in an old-age home in Punjab.
Initially, non-bailable warrants were issued against the accused, but he didn’t appear before the court, after which he was declared a proclaimed offender.
Police received a tip-off that Gupta was residing in an old-age home located in Punjab’s Patiala by hiding his identity. Using advanced technical surveillance and human intelligence, a team comprising ASI Sanjeev, ASI Neeraj, HC Mintu Yadav, and HC Sawai from the ARSC, Shakarpur, Crime Branch, arrested him on Saturday.
Born in Mandi Dabwali in Haryana’s Sirsa in 1948, Gupta did his MA (History) and MA (Economics) from Panjab University and was reportedly a student of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh when the latter was a professor there.
“Sitaram Gupta, who worked as a contractor in the Indian Army, gained knowledge of various ranks of army officers and learned about the recruitment process of the Indian Army. He came to Delhi in 1987 and started working as an oil contractor. Besides work, he used to introduce himself as a Colonel of the Indian Army and started defrauding Delhiites. He took money from several youths on the pretext of giving them a job in the Indian Army,” a statement issued by the police said.
The accused was found involved in three cases of cheating and forgery registered at the Police Station Shakarpur and the Crime Branch in Delhi.
(IANS)
