Mysuru, Apr. 9 (BS)- City Crime Branch (CCB) Police have arrested a man on the charges of cheating many on the promise of getting interest-free loan from banks and have recovered Rs. 21 lakh cash and 426 grams of gold from him.

The accused is identified as Vinod Kumar of Ittigegud and he had cheated gullible people at Lalithadripura, Paduvarahalli, T. Narasipur and several other places.

He was targeting uneducated people and was collecting lakhs of rupees with an assurance to get loan from banks at zero percent rate of interest. If not cash, he was also taking gold ornaments from the victims, the Police said.

B.C. Sowmya, a home-maker at Lalithadripura, came in contact with the accused through instagram. To gain her confidence, he had posed himself as affluent person, claiming to be owning several houses in Lalithadripura and assets in other places.

“Income Tax Department raided our house, with the case being heard in the Court and I am spending a lot of money on this,” Vinod Kumar had told Sowmya to win her trust.

In the later days, Vinod Kumar started visiting Sowmya’s house and also befriended her daily wager husband. He had advised him to stop going on a coolie work, and promised to buy them two cars, if they gave him some amount.

The cars can be rented out for pick-up and drop of the doctors at Kamakshi Hospital and earn some money, the accused had told the couple.

The couple came in his words and gave Rs. 2 lakh to him in June 2022. However, he asked them to wait for sometime to buy the car, but in the meanwhile, held out another promise of facilitating interest-free loan of Rs. 20 lakh from a bank.

He also assured to double the amount (Rs. 2 lakh) already given to him, if they allowed to keep the amount. When they sounded helpless, with no money in hand, he collected gold ornaments weighing 89 grams from the couple, it is alleged.

Even as Sowmya and her husband were waiting for the bank loan, the accused Vinod Kumar conned Sowmya’s relatives Cheluvaraju and Jayanti in a similar fashion and collected Rs. 6 lakh cash and 96 grams of gold valuables from them.

Later, Sowmya also learnt about Vinod Kumar cheating her other relatives — S.S. Lakshmi of Lalithadripura, Ashwini of Bhyraveshwar Nagar, her cousin Kiran, Roopa of Paduvarahalli and Chanchalamma of T. Narasipur — by collecting both cash and gold from them.

On Mar. 30, Sowmya lodged a complaint against Vinod Kumar at Alanahalli Police Station in the city. The case was transferred to CCB for investigation.

Acting on the guidance of DCP (Law and Order) M. Muthuraj, DCP (Crime and Traffic) S. Jahnavi, ACP (CCB) S.N. Sandesh Kumar, a team of Police personnel cracked the case by arresting Vinod Kumar and recovering cash and valuables from him. Vinod has been remanded to judicial custody.

The Police team included CCB Inspector Krishna Kumar, Sub-Inspectors Maruti Antharagatti and Rangaswamy, ASI Asgar Khan, staff Salim Pasha, Ramaswamy, A. Umamahesh, Madhusudan, Prakash, Suresh, Mahesh, Ravishankar, Lakshmikanth, Mohan Aradhya, Chandrashekar, Narasimharaju, Mamatha, Ramya and drivers Shivakumar and K.S. Ravi.