Sixteen people have been arrested from a call centre in New Town for allegedly duping people by posing as representatives and officials of the telecom industry looking for places to set up telecom towers.
A team from Eco Park police station and officers from the Bidhannagar commissionerate’s detective department arrested the 16 from the fifth floor of Astra Towers in New Town’s Action Area II on Tuesday.
Astra Towers is a commercial building with offices and retail spaces.
The office was raided based on a tip-off that the call centre was duping people on the pretext of setting up telecom towers in the city and its outskirts, a senior officer of the Bidhannagar commissionerate said.
“Those who were making calls would first ask their victims if they had a parcel of land or if the roof of their building was open and could be used to set up cellphone towers of various reputed telecom service providers. If people replied in the affirmative, they would make an initial offer of a huge sum of money. Once the offer piqued the interest of the victims, they would keep taking money from them on the pretext of various fees and charges, including processing fee and TRAI licence fees,” said an officer of the Bidhannagar commissionerate’s detective department.
Once the “processing fees and TRAI licence fees” were deposited in the bank accounts provided by them, the racketeers would stop taking the victims’ calls, the officer said.
The police said they had seized multiple smartphones and data sheets with names and contact details of people.
The arrested were produced at a court in Barasat. Four of them were sent to police remand for two days and the rest to jail custody for 14 days.
Since October, this is the 12th fraudulent call centre that has been shut down by the Bidhannagar commissionerate.