A father and son were arrested on Monday from Englishbazar in north Bengal’s Malda district, around 330km north of Kolkata, for allegedly creating a fake email ID in the name of Union coal minister Pralhad Joshi, police said.
Sanjay Goswami and his son Subrata, the police said, used the fake email ID to send an application on a fake letterhead of the minister to the Coal India Ltd office in New Town, recommending a youth for a job in the company.
“While investigating a complaint lodged by Coal India Ltd with New Town police station in August 2021, we learnt that both the email ID and the letterhead were created in Malda,” said an officer of New Town police station.
A joint team of New Town police and Malda police raided the Goswami residence in Englishbazar in Malda and arrested the two.
“We have found forged letterheads of the chief minister and chief secretary of Jharkhand and of the power minister of Bengal,” the officer said.
Findings of a preliminary investigation suggest the father and the son were running a racket and cheating people by taking money from them against false promises of jobs, he said
“However, this can be verified only after we interrogate them for further details.”
The accused duo have been charged under IPC sections related to cheating, forgery, impersonation and fraud.
An officer not involved with the investigation said the modus operandi — where racketeers take money from job seekers and provide fake recommendation letters bearing the names of politicians and bureaucrats — is not uncommon.
The New Town police officer said they were trying to find out whether the father and the son had duped any other person.