KOLKATA: Dressed in formals and posing as job seekers appearing for an interview, Bidhannagar cops raided a fake call centre at Chinar Park on Thursday. The call centre used to dupe residents in Germany, Ireland and the US on the pretext of offering tech support. The crackdown followed a complaint lodged by Microsoft Corporation (India) Pvt Ltd.
During the entire operation that saw the arrest of four of its officials and seizure of several articles and digital documents, officials of the German law enforcement agency were kept on loop.
On Thursday, around 11.30am, four officers of the detective department of Bidhannagar City Police reached New Town Square commercial building at Chinar Park and made entry at the ground floor reception as job seekers appearing for an interview at AG Info Solve Pvt. Ltd on the fourth floor of the building.
As four men initially went up and entered office 4L, soon a group of another four officers climbed up and stood outside the door of the office to ensure none could come out. In the next one hour, more police personnel — all in plainclothes — started entering the building and took positions on multiple floors, outside lifts and emergency exits. The receptionist tried to inform the building officials about their presence but cops asked her not to do so and pretend as if nothing has happened.
“It was like a movie scene. It took me some time to realise it was a police raid. But all of us cooperated with them upon realising they were cops,” said the receptionist.
The raid continued for more than 11 hours as the cops took control of the office, snapped phone connections and took their mobile phones before grilling the senior officials, including the two directors — Gourav Jain and Sachin Toshniwal — for over five hours at a stretch before they broke down and confessed their crime.
Apart from Jain and Toshniwal, two others – Raneet Acharya and Prasenjit Hari — were also arrested and were booked under multiple sections pertaining to cheating and 0forgery. They were produced before a Bidhannagar Court on Friday and were sent to six days police custody.
“The complaint was drawn up on the basis of a complaint lodged by the Microsoft Corp (India). The modus operandi came to light when the complainant received reports from aggrieved victims that they have been defrauded in the name of providing technical support and the company took the payments in the name of Intraxis,” said an officer of Bidhannagar Commissionerate.
