Balasore: Soro police on Tuesday night arrested a fraudster who allegedly duped as many as 22 youths on the pretext of offering them jobs in banks and other sectors.
The accused identified as Ramesh Chandra Padhi is a resident of Manitri village under Soro police limits. On Thursday, Soro police forwarded the accused to court for duping more than Rs 2 Crore from several youths.
According to police sources, the accused had collected Rs 3 Lakh each from one Sanjay Kumar Panda and 21 other youths on the pretext of giving them appointment in different banks and other sectors in 2019. Ramesh had showed the job aspirants forged notifications of banks to win their confidence.
When the job aspirants did not receive any interview letters from banks they approached Ramesh. The accused reportedly took all the job aspirants to the Grievance Cell of Balasore Collectorate office and filed a petition on the same to pacify them. Ramesh had also filed a fake writ petition with the Orissa High Court in this regard.
The job aspirants led by Sanjay, who hails from Chaparpada village of Sajanpur panchayat, approached Soro Police after banks confirmed that no advertisements were issued for recruitment. It was then they realised that all of them had been cheated by Ramesh.
Earlier, Sushant Kumar of Soro had also filed a complaint against Ramesh for duping him of Rs 58 lakh on the pretext of issuing him licence for kerosene dealership.
Based on these complaints, police registered a case against Ramesh and launched a manhunt to nab Ramesh. Police arrested Ramesh from Bhadrak last night and forwarded him to court on Thursday. As many as 10 cases have been pending against the accused.
Addressing the media, Soro SDPO Sashank Sekhar Beura said, “Ramesh has cheated as many as 22 youths on the pretext of giving jobs in several banks. We succeeded to nab Ramesh who is one of the two accused. He is a habitual fraudster. He used to win the confidence of people by telling them that he had good contact with higher-level officers at Secretariat and DGP office and duped them. He has cheated Rs 21.16 crore till date,”
