Conmen offered to exchange defunct notes for a 20% commission; once they had the cash they would threaten the victims with their underworld connections
Mumbai: Gang pretended to have underworld links to cheat note exchangers
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Almost three weeks after the Haryana police busted a racket that was being run in the name of D-company and arrested four people, another man was picked up from Mumbai. Natraj Shetty, 35, was arrested after a team of Haryana police raided his house in Santacruz West around 12:30 am on Sunday. He was taken to the Santacruz police station for interrogations and later produced before the Bandra court, which granted him transit remand till December 28.
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A police officer said, “The Haryana police team visited the Santacruz police station after Shetty’s arrest and handed him over to them. He is being interrogated further.”
Scaring customers
Speaking to mid-day, Inspector Varun Kumar of Haryana police said, “The gang used to first look for people who were willing to exchange defunct currencies for new notes or gold. Then they approached them and offered to exchange the money with a 10-20 per cent deduction as their service charge. After the customers agreed, they took the money and scared them by saying that they were involved with Dawood Ibrahim’s men. Thereafter, they fled with the cash.”
Recently, a Haryana-based businessman filed a complaint against four members of the gang, which later led to their arrest. He had sold his agricultural land for Rs 1.5 crore and hence, needed to exchange the cash. By this time, the Haryana police already had four similar cases in their record.
Inspector Kumar said, “The arrest of the four people and their interrogations led us to the Mumbai-based person, who was also a part of the gang. Our team is camping in Pune for further investigations. More arrests are expected related to the matter.”
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