Devbrat Patnaik

Nabarangpur: Police claim to have busted a fake job racket by arresting three persons including a couple on charges of duping several people to the tune of lakhs of rupees on false assurance of providing them jobs in various government sectors.

What's more shocking is that the trio had opened offices at Nabarangpur and Umerkote in the name of National Human Rights Citizens Commission to operate the racket.

The accused couple Asish Patra and his wife Ranjana Verma were found to be residents of Gulipatna Street in Umerkote while the third person Anil Kumar Banerjee belongs to Bhubaneswar, police sources said.

One Premashila Nayak of Singirikari village says that she decided to battle out the financial constraints as her husband’s earnings were not enough to run the family. When the accused promised her a job with a monthly salary of Rs 7000, provided she deposits a sum of Rs 40000 at the beginning, Nayak took loan from her relatives and handed it over to them.

After Nayak, several youths from Raighar, Umerkote, Jharigaon and even people from Kalahandi district deposited Rs 40000 to as much as Rs 10 lakh at the fake office on false assurance of being given lucrative jobs.

Though the applicants received appointment letters, they did not get any job neither was there any development regarding their postings.

Months passed and when nothing materialised, the job aspirants asked the ‘NHRCC staff’ to refund their money. It was when they were denied a reimbursement, they smelled something fishy and lodged a complaint with police in this connection, sources said.

Acting on the complaint, police registered a case and immediately arrested the accused. This apart, police have seized a car, two laptops and several fake job letters from their possession.

Nabarangpur SP, Nitin Kusalkar said, “The three accused duped people with a promise of providing them jobs. An investigation is underway to find out if any other person/persons are involved in the racket.”

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