LIVE TV
Odisha
Photo: OTV 
Recommended Stories
What has become the major cause of concern these days is that job aspirants, particularly in rural areas, are increasingly falling prey to fraudsters who dupe them of lakhs of rupees on the pretext of providing lucrative jobs.
Recently, the Special Task Force of the Crime Branch arrested two such fraudsters who cheated job aspirants of crores of rupees. The arrested fraudsters have been identified as Kishore Mishra of Ganjam district and Kanhucharan Pradhan of Tangi area in Khordha district.
They would find their soft targets in the rural job aspirants. Their modus operandi was to track the panchayat-level job advertisements. Once any advertisement was published, they would reach out to their targets. They would save their names as the additional secretary of the Panchayati Raj department in the true caller and manage to take the aspirants into confidence. Then they would easily dupe the gullible rural youths of lakhs of money by providing them fake appointment letters. Sometimes, they would also publish fake job advertisements.
The STF arrested Kishore and Kanhu in connection with a case wherein they duped people of lakhs of rupees by introducing themselves as RTI activists. Now, they are lodged in Koraput jail.
“They were introducing themselves to the job aspirants as additional secretary. They would say that they would arrange jobs for them as they had acquaintances with high-level officers,” said STF, Crime Branch SP, Kishore Kumar Panigrahi.
The above case is only the tip of the iceberg.
In January, a person identified as Jaffer Ahmed from Uttar Pradesh was arrested for cheating around 50,000 job aspirants of Odisha and other states. In April, the EOW had arrested Arun Mohanty and Raj Kishore Pattanayak for the same type of offence.
“The youths should have the slightest knowledge that jobs are not the things that are selling in the market and easily available to them. Before replying to any job advertisement, they should get them verified with their educated relatives. Only awareness can save them from these job scammers,” said Sarat Sahoo, a former police official.
As per the information shared by the Odisha government, every year, on an average 5,00,000 youths get their names registered for employment. In 2022, 8,80,000 youths had got their names registered.
- Reported by:
- CHANDAN PAIKRAY
