Fraudsters, who posed as vigilance cops to dupe octogenarian Odisha doctor, arrested

Police in the Kendrapara district on Wednesday arrested six members of a gang, including a 20-year-old engineering student, who posed as vigilance officials to loot the house of a retired physician on 10 July last.

A special squad, formed to nab the miscreants, cracked the case analysis of Call Detail Record( CDR) and CCTV footage in the area, said the Inspector-In-Charge Derabish police station, Ambika Prasad Das.

Advertisement

The criminals booked under sections- 310 (dacoity) and 333 (house trespass) under BNS were later sent to jail after a local Court rejected their bail application, Das added.

The fraudsters barged into the house of physician Dr Jalil Ahamad Khan at Oldhi village under the Derabish police station on 10 July afternoon and faked their identity as vigilance cops. Later, they conducted a search operation to detect movable and immovable assets, disproportionate to the physician’s known source of income.

Dr Khan, a popular physician in the area, had retired from service at the government medical college at Jamshedpur in Jharkhand two decades ago. Post-retirement, he opted to live in the native village to serve the local residents.

The self-styled vigilance cops furnished fake proof of identity to impress upon the physicians that they were conducting raids on specific feedback on accumulation of ill-gotten assets. They later made away with Rs 1.5 lakh cash, 500 grams of gold ornaments. The miscreants while leaving the place directed the victim to turn up at the district vigilance office at Kendrapara with proof that his assets and source of income was legitimate. The entire operation was well-orchestrated and lasted for about an hour.

Later, after turning up at the vigilance office, he was shocked to find that he had been taken for a ride by miscreants.