New Delhi, (Samajweekly) The Delhi Police on Friday claimed to have arrested a woman from remote Madhya Pradesh village for cheating people on the pretext of providing Remdesivir injections amid Covid pandemic crisis.
Atul Kumar Thakur, DCP south Delhi, said that the arrested individual has been identified as Vartika Rai, a first year student of Psychology.
He said she has cheated over 11 persons of over Rs 2 lakh on the pretext of providing injections.
Providing details of the case, Thakur said that on May 1, a complainant approached police at Defence Colony police station with the allegations that he was in urgent need of Remdesivir injection for his relative.
He said that he got a mobile phone number on Internet and after making a call on it, the person on the other side promised to give 5 injections of Remdesivir for Rs 32,400. The demanded amount was transferred by the complainant through UPI transaction.
“After the transfer of money, that individual did not respond. Later, a dedicated team was formed and investigation was taken up,” he said.
“On May 24 a dedicated team was sent to Old BJP Office, Barapatthar in Seoni district of Madhya Pradesh,” he said.
“The team after travelling 1,000 km distance reached Seoni city, carried searches for the accused person. Even after facing difficulty in finding the above mentioned address as there was no house number or street number, the team rigorously searched the address. All out efforts were been made to nab Rai.
“The relentless efforts of the team yielded results and the location of the accused was traced with the help of technical surveillance.A Immediately, on May 26, the team raided at the house of accused Rai and successfully arrested her,” the DCP said.
During probe, two mobile phones, passbook of different bank accounts, four ATM Cards and Rs 32,400 were recovered from her.
He further said that during interrogation, Rai confessed of being guilty and told that she is a student of Psychology first year from IGNOU University. Also, she likes to promote pages on Instagram and earn money from that. His father is having his own medical store and uncle suffered from Covid.
“Thereafter, she saw an opportunity during this emergency situation of Covid-19 and got interested in ‘this kind of use’ of social media to earn more money by cheating the innocent people who were in urgent need of the medicines,” he said.
“She also revealed that from April 29 to May 1, she got many WhatsApp messages from 11 innocent persons, who were in need of Covid-19 medicines urgently in Delhi and NCR. She had cheated 11 persons by about Rs 2.25 lakh,” the DCP added.
