Four members of "rice puller" gang arrested in Mumbai
Mumbai: Police have arrested four members of a gang involved in cheating people on the pretext of selling "rice puller" metal device, an official said on Tuesday.
They sold the metal, made of copper iridium, to gullible people, claiming it was highly valuable, and made lakhs of rupees in the process, he said.
The accused, arrested by the Mumbai Crime Branch, were identified as Baswaraj Nillappa Talwar, Mohan Jaychandrappa, Santosh Surya Kumar and Guruvharan Singh alias Raja Chouhan, the official said.
He said except Chouhan, all others are residents of neighbouring Karnataka.
The Unit 10 of the Crime Branch had received information about the gang cheating people on the pretext of selling the metal to foreigners, the official said.
The gang members had told investors around Rs 39,000 crore has been collected in the Reserve Bank of India from the sale of the metal and they required to pay at least Rs 20 crore as tax to get the amount, he said.
Crime Branch officials got information that the gang members were searching for more victims, he said.
Accordingly, they laid a trap near a hotel in suburban Andheri by promising the gang members to pay Rs 10 lakh for the metal on February 25 and arrested two of the accused, he said.
After their interrogation, the officials arrested the remaining two gang members on Monday, he said.
Similar scams have come to light in various parts of the country.
In such cases, scamsters usually lure victims into investing in the metal device that tested the quality of copper iridium which supposedly attracts rice grains and has some extraordinary properties.
