Fake call centre busted in Gurugram, 12 suspects held

A fake call centre operating from a rented apartment in Sushant Lok Phase 3 was busted by Gurugram police on Thursday night, leading to the arrest of 12 suspects, including five women, police said on Friday. The call centre was running under the garb of providing technical support to foreign nationals and duped them of hundreds of dollars, police added.

According to investigators, the call centre was running for the last six months and was involved in duping residents of the United States, Canada and Australia. Police said 10 laptops, three mobile phones, two modems and ₹56,000 cash were recovered from the suspects.

Vipin Ahalawat, assistant commissioner of police (cyber), said the suspects impersonated employees of a prominent technology company.

ACP Ahalawat said they received a tip-off after which a team was formed under the supervision of Jasvir Singh, station house officer (SHO) of Cyber Crime police station to raid the call centre on Thursday night. He said they found the suspects making international calls at the time of the raid.

“The suspects had created virtual toll-free numbers to provide technical assistance to the foreign nationals. They used to charge their victims anything between $100 and $5,000 for technical assistance,” the ACP said.

The owners of the call centre were identified as Harshit Kashyap, Varun Dua and Manmeet Singh, police said, adding that all three of them have been arrested along with nine other employees. The employees were paid salaries and incentives every month and all of them had prior experience of working in international call centres.

SHO Singh said the suspects used to first take their victims into confidence by introducing themselves as experts to solve technical problems related to desktops and laptops. “The suspects used to take remote access of their victims’ system through applications such as AnyDesk,” he said.

A case under Section 420 (cheating) and 120B (conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Information Technology (IT) Act was registered against the suspects at Cyber Crime police station (east), said police.

Police said in the last two months, they have busted six illegal call centres across Gurugram that were allegedly duping foreign nationals and arrested at least 53 suspects.