Fraudsters Galore

Assam Police must be congratulated for carrying out a major crackdown on fraudsters, touts and  middlemen across the state past Friday midnight, which led to the arrest of as many as 330 persons in different districts. Media reports quoting Assam Police Director General Harmeet Singh said the operation was launched in the direction of the Chief Minister against the backdrop of a rise in the number of complaints about some people allegedly targeting and deceiving citizens visiting police stations by claiming to have influence over the police. According to the DGP, the arrested individuals were reportedly operating around police stations and approached complainants and other vulnerable people and promised to intervene with police personnel or facilitate official processes in exchange for money. Some fraudsters have also been operating from outside the state, including cities like Bengaluru and Hyderabad, reports said. It is fascinating to note that the arrested individuals used various kinds of tricks to cheat vulnerable citizens. In certain cases, the fraudsters would pose as police personnel and even as lawyers to gain the trust of vulnerable individuals and then rob them by taking money for settling their issues. The DGP said that some fraudsters also engaged conmen who would hang around local police stations with the objective of trapping citizens who went there to register complaints or file FIRs. After gaining the victims’ confidence, the fraudsters would promise to settle police cases or expedite complaint processing in exchange for money, which they claimed was needed to bribe the relevant police officers. Some of the suspects also went to the extent of issuing threats to the victims and forcefully extracting money from them by showing the fear of complicating things. Another category of fraudsters operating in Assam runs employment rackets that exploit the state’s massive unemployment situation. While most such fraudsters target innocent job-seekers by making false promises of getting them direct employment in the Railways, Oil India Ltd and other organisations, some gangs even hold fake interview sessions and issue fake appointment letters in exchange for giant sums of money. The sad part is that while dropouts or individuals with less educational qualifications, hailing from interior places, are the favourite targets of the fraudsters, occasionally educated individuals have also fallen into such traps. It was only recently that a major multi-departmental scam surfaced where a fraudulent network collected lakhs of rupees from unemployed youths by falsely promising guaranteed positions in Oil India Limited and the State Agriculture Department. While the police have done a good job winding up over 300 such crooks, what is also required is a good campaign to raise awareness about these frauds.