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The Hindu
The Hindu
National
Special Correspondent

Man posing as RAW officer held for cheating engineer of ₹89 lakh

The Bellandur police on Saturday arrested a 33-year-old realtor who pretended to be a RAW agent with the Prime Minister’s office for allegedly cheating a city based software engineer of ₹89 lakh after promising to get her visas to other countries.

Based on a complaint filed by the victim, the police track down the accused, identified as Arahanth Mohan Kumar Lakkavall. He hails from Shivamogga and is a resident of Rajajinagar 4th block, said the police who have charged him  or cheating and impersonation.

According to the police, Mohan Kumar is a B. Com graduate employed with a real estate firm. In 2019, met the woman on a flight to Kuala Lumpur from Bengaluru.

“The accused introduced himself as a RAW agent working in the PMO in New Delhi,” said the police. During the course of their conversation, the woman mentioned that her visa application to Italy and the Czech Republic had been rejected in 2019 without any reason.  The accused promised to help find out the reason for the rejection using his official position and took her passport details.

They kept in touch over three years during which he reportedly called her and said that she had been blacklisted for suspected terrorists activities in many foreign countries. He promised to remove her name from the list, but remanded ₹6 crore. When she told him that she didn’t have that kind of money, he convinced her to transfer ₹89 lakh to various accounts over a period of three years.

He even took her to the Whitefield police station and the CID office under the pretext of getting her the required clearances, but arranged it in such a way that she never met any inspector or senior police official. He reportedly asked her to sit in the waiting area while he took care of it, and disappeared with her passport.

Unable to get back her passport, the victim realised that she has been cheated and approached the police on April 26. Based on her statement, the police tracked down Mohan Kumar and arrested him.

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