Promising job in army, man scams 17 people of ₹30 lakh, arrested
Utkarsh Pandey, who ran a roadside eatery in Lucknow, had lied to his family that he was now a lieutenant, U.P. Special Task Force (STF), who arrested Pandey while he was trying to flee to Delhi, said in a note.
Once an army aspirant, a man from Kushinagar district was arrested in the state capital on Friday night for allegedly defrauding 17 people of an estimated ₹30 lakh on the pretext of getting them selected in the Indian Army and Indian Air Force, senior police officials said on Saturday.
Utkarsh Pandey, who ran a roadside eatery in Lucknow after unsuccessfully trying to get in the military, had lied to his family that he was now a lieutenant, U.P. Special Task Force (STF), who arrested Pandey while he was trying to flee to Delhi, said in a note. He used his false identity to cheat people, it added.
The STF said the accused had last taken an NDA exam and Air Force Group X & Y exam in 2020 but failed to clear them. To save himself from the embarrassment even when a youth from his village had cleared the Group X (technical) exam, Pandey lied to his family that he was undergoing training in Hyderabad, the STF officials said, adding he had been living in Lucknow since 2021.
The accused later bought a dress that looked like the air force uniform and wore it every time he went to his village.
“Everybody in his family believed that he was an air force officer and even people had organised a felicitation programme for him. Some eveb put up his posters congratulating him,” an STF official added.
The STF official said Pandey confessed to have duped 17 aspirants--seven from Kushinagar, six from Basti and three from Sultanpur and one from Ayodhya.
