Gujarat: Father-son duo who conned hundreds to repay debt held

RAJKOT: A father-son duo from Junagadh who conned hundreds of people of Rs 35.9 lakh to repay loans were arrested in Banaskantha district on Tuesday.
The local crime branch of Junagadh police received information that Bharat Parmar and his son Tushar Parmar are hiding in Banaskantha district after taking Rs 35.9 lakh from many people. The duo had taken money from the victims to invest in postal deposits and fixed deposits in private banks.On reaching Banaskantha, cops found Bharat hiding in Asara village, which is located around 20 kilometres from India-Pakistan border, while Tushar was nabbed from a residential society on Tharad-Sanchor highway.
During interrogation, the father-son duo admitted that between 2007 and 2016, they suffered losses amounting to Rs 3 crore in intraday trading in stock and commodity markets. Since they had borrowed money from private lenders at high interest rate, they were under pressure to return the money. The duo had also taken loans and diverted the money in the markets.
To repay the money, they started conning people by taking money from them as investments. The accused also forged receipts to give as proof of investments to the victims. When the investments used to mature, they would insist the victims to renew the investment amounts so that they would not have to pay the money. But when a victim used to ask for the money, they used to borrow money at high interest from private lenders and return back the money.
“The accused ran the scam for six years from 2014 to 2020. So far, over 200 victims have come forward with their complaints, but we expect more people to come out against them in next few days,” said a police official.