2 cheat people, promise holidays, arrested
The city police on Friday arrested Shaik Khadar Basha and Panaganti Vijay Kumar, managing directors of Fortune Group of Estates and Services for allegedly cheating about 2,000 people by making false assurances of providing holidays, health club memberships and plots.
The accused earlier worked with a private club in the city and set up Fortune Groups of Estates and Services with its head office at Anandnagar in Khairatabad. The duo set up the company in June last year and have been luring gullible people to become members. They employed around 60 to 70 people to work in a call centre to lure the public.
“Around 30 youth were appointed marketing executives and were assigned the task of collecting contact details of people who visit various shopping malls and multiplexes. Later, the executives at the customer care would call customers and inform that they had won a prize and could come collect it from some prominent hotel,” said DCP Task Force, P Radhakishan Rao.
When the person reaches the hotel the company executives lure them into becoming members of the company.
“The executives explain about the various benefits of becoming a member including free membership for health club, holiday packages and recreational club memberships. They also assure to give members plots. To gain their confidence, the executives would give them a small momentum of religious significance as a gift,” said the official.
Further the gang managed to obtain a layout from the sarpanch of Jupally village and grampanchayat to show the members. “We are probing how the gang managed to obtain the documents. It is illegal on the part of the sarpanch to issue documents without clearance,” the DCP said. Two lovers were reunited and tied the knot in a filmy style at Arya Samaj in Nizamabad on Friday.
Court directives and counselling by police united the lovers and landed the family members of the girl in jail. Pranadeep of Renjal and Soujanya of Makloor fell in love, while studying in a degree college.
Pranadeep and Soujanya belong to different communities and their parents objected for their marriage. Meanwhile, the lovers decided to marry in Arya Samaj on Wednesday.
Soujanya’s family members reached Arya Samaj and attacked Pranadeep. They also forcibly took her away on a bike.
Nizamabad ACP M. Sudarshan said, “We produced the victim in court and Soujanya showed willingness to marry Pranadeep.”