Two guys have been detained in India for allegedly defrauding scores of applicants for jobs with Indian Railways out of thousands of rupees.
The suspects are accused of making fake work offers to 28 persons who were duped into counting trains for weeks.
Last November, police began investigating the scheme.
Each victim paid between 200,000 and 2.4 million rupees to acquire positions as ticket inspectors, traffic aides, or clerks.
Indian Railways is one of the largest employers in the world. Scams involving government jobs are common in India, where millions of young people are anxious for solid, secure work.
Sivaraman V and Vikas Rana, the two men detained, are suspected of being part of a group that reportedly asked the victims, who are from the southern Tamil Nadu state, to stand at different platforms of India’s major train station in Delhi for eight hours every day for almost a month.
According to police, Rana, who is from Delhi, used to work at the National Museum of Natural History but departed in March of last year. According to the Times of India, Sivaraman V resides in Tamil Nadu.
According to the Press Trust of India (PTI), the accused reportedly requested the victims to count the trains that went by the station every day.
Subbuswamy, a retired army official who said he accidentally placed the victims in contact with the perpetrators, notified police to the fraud.
He told PTI that he has been assisting young guys from his homeland in Tamil Nadu’s Virudhunagar district in finding employment “without any monetary incentive” for himself.
He claimed to have met a guy named Sivaraman, who claimed to have ties with congressmen and ministers and offered to help the unemployed men obtain government employment.
The culprit then placed Subbuswamy and the victims in touch with another guy, who even put the applicants through bogus medical exams. Later, he stopped responding their phone calls.
Some of the victims stated that they borrowed money to pay the con artists.
The suspects are being held by police and have not made any statements since their arrest.
