BENGALURU: Pointing out that there are no victims or complaints lodged by general public alleging cheating, the Karnataka high court has quashed the proceedings against four persons accused of running a fake call center at Whitefield, Bengaluru city.
"Merely seizing some mobile phones from the place of business by the police by raiding on July 8, 2022 ,that itself cannot constitute any offence against these petitioners, in order to initiate proceedings and conduct trial to show they have impersonated any of the victim and cheated any of the general public at large", Justice K Natarajan has observed in his order.
Allowing the petitions filed by Rishi Vyas, Jatiya Kishan Heerabhai, Syed Ibrath and Rishabh, the judge has noted that Ethical Infotech Pvt Ltd , the main company was not made as an accused in the two cases registered by Mahadevapura and Whitefield police respectively.
The judge also pointed out that while accused no 1 Rishi Vyas is just an employee of the company, Syed Ibrath is a travel agent and Rishabh is totally a stranger and added that only one Director( Jatiya Kishan) of the company so far has been made an accused in the case.
"Absolutely there are no victims or any complaint made by any of the public who have been actually cheated by these petitioners.That apart, out of the two volume of charge sheet, the police not produced any single evidence against these petitioners to show these accused persons are involved in running the fake call centre and collected money from any of the public either citizen of India or citizens of America. Simply they have seized all the materials, cash, cars, mobile phones, laptop but absolutely there is no incriminating material to connect the accused with the crime, in order to show the petitioners intentionally involved in the commission of cheating or fabricating the documents or snatched the cash belonging to any of the customers", Justice Natarajan has said .
However, if the police wants to further investigate the matter and they have liberty to investigate the matter further and they can file the additional charge sheet against the actual or real culprit,the judge has further added. Background
The case of the complaint in both the cases filed by police officers of Mahadevapura as well as Whitefield police is that accused were running fake company running the call centre namely Ethical Infotech Pvt. Ltd., Gayatri Techpark Building, EPIP Zone, Whitefiled and also at Silver Soft Techpark, Mahadevarpura , were engaging various persons as employees and they used to call the citizens of USA stating that there was a gift from the Amazon Company and asking them to go and collect the gift.
It was alleged that when the customers go to the Amazon either to receive the gift or to cancel the order, they have to give the password and if password/OTP is given the accused company used to snatch/draw amount from the account of the customers. Further it was contended they are running the fake call centre.
However,the petitioners had argued that in the absence of any complaint or victims, they have been falsely implicated in the case and absolutely there is no material or evidence against them.
