Gang ran near-perfect Railway recruitment racket; two arrested

Mysore/Mysuru: In what may be called the biggest catch in Mysuru region, the Railway Protection Force (RPF), Mysuru, has busted a fake Railway recruitment racket and arrested two persons.

A preliminary estimate has revealed that the accused had defrauded over 400 job aspirants of a whopping Rs. 22 crore and more and surprisingly nothing went amiss till the gang was cornered by the RPF sleuths based on a complaint.

The accused have been identified as 44-year-old Chandra Gowda S. Patil, a resident of Mysuru and 62-year-old Shivaswamy, a retired Railway employee and native of Gadag.

A complaint was lodged by the Chief Medical Superintendent on the movement of several suspicious-looking persons who were taking photographs in the premises of Railway Hospital and behaving dubiously.

Based on this, the RPF sleuths were pressed into action to keep watch on the activities of these people. Close surveillance on the activities of this gang confirmed that they were running a fake Railway recruitment racket luring young job aspirants with lucrative Railway jobs. The gang ran an operational centre in and around a house opposite Shiva Shakti Kalyana Mantapa, near Highway Circle in the city, targeting mainly poor and gullible village boys.

They collected original educational certificates of candidates and issued fake call letters, medical memos and appointment orders.

So perfect was the documentation that the candidates did not suspect anything as the letters were perfectly forged to match the original letters and appointment orders.

The gang extracted large sums of money from the job aspirants and the masterminds would take several lakhs of rupees from each candidate and as per a conservative estimate, around 400 candidates got cheated for a total sum of Rs. 22 crore.

Many had given money by selling their land and taking loans at high interest rates, said a press note from the Railways. A total of 221 blank signed cheque leaves, cash amounting to Rs. 4.15 lakh, original documents of aspiring candidates, cheque books, about 100 fake Railway appointment orders, 70 fake nameplates of TTEs, a laptop and a computer were seized from the duo.

The accused, along with the seized materials, were handed over to the Mandi Police Station Inspector for initiating necessary legal process and an FIR was registered at Mandi Police Station. 

Thomas John, Divisional Security Commissioner,  A. Sridhar, Assistant Security Commissioner, RPF and a team consisting of Inspectors Satheesan,  M. Nishadh, Venkatesh, Radhakrishna and staff were involved in the operation.

Rahul Agarwal, Divisional Railway Manager, South Western Railway (SWR), Mysuru Division, has appealed the aspiring candidates to visit official websites of Railway Recruitment Boards (RRBs) only for any notice or information regarding Railway recruitment. “Any information or notices being circulated on social media regarding RRBs or offers being made by individuals for monetary consideration should be straightaway ignored,” he said.