Man arrested for duping over 400 in insurance fraud

Gurugram: The police on Tuesday arrested a member of an insurance fraud gang that has allegedly duped about 440 people across the country, including some from Gurugram and Delhi.

The suspect, Rahul Kumar, 26, was arrested from Neb Sarai in Delhi’s Saket and confessed that he and his associates were active from the last two and half years and operated from Delhi, the police said.

According to the police, the gang began duping people on the pretext of renewing their vehicle insurance policy when the Covid-19 lockdown started. The gang used to source data of vehicle owners from websites after which they used to call them by impersonating insurance agents from reputed private firms and lured them by offering 25% discounts on premiums for renewing the policies, said police.

The police said the fraudsters also used websites to forge old documents provided by the victims to change date, time and premium amount to make them look like renewed ones. Prior to the lockdown, the gang worked in a fake call centre in Delhi where they acquired skills to dupe people.

While Kumar on Wednesday was taken on a three-day police remand for interrogation, some members of the gang were arrested in the past few years, said police.

Preet Pal Sangwan, assistant commissioner of police (crime), said, “We will contact police of other states where they have victimised others to share details about the arrested members.”

He said that after Kumar’s arrest, police got to know about a bank account in which ₹42,95,365 was deposited over the last several months.

Police said that the number of victims and the amount of fraud money may grow further. They said few more members were yet to be arrested and statements of 88 more accounts including those from Karnataka, West Bengal, north eastern states, used by the gang, were awaited.

The first case reported was of an insurance firm which received multiple complaints from customers about policy lapse even after paying premium and second FIR was of a victim named Kabir Jain who was duped of ₹51,218 on pretext of renewing his Toyota Fortuners’ policy.