The Hindu : New Delhi News : Held for cheating

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jun 22, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

Held for cheating

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI, JUNE 21. A garment dealer, who had allegedly cheated several garment exporters in Delhi and Mumbai, has been arrested by the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Delhi police. The accused had duped these businessmen of over Rs. 2 crores.

According to the police, a complaint was received by the EOW from a garment firm in Okhla, South Delhi, in January 2003 saying that a person had duped them of huge sums of money by purchasing fabric in bulk from them against cheques which bounced. Subsequently, the police got complaints from nine other garment exporters, who were cheated the City area. In both the cases, the offices opened by the accused - one was in Okhla and the other in Rajender Nagar - were found closed when the victims tried to contact them for recovering their money.

Following three months of investigations, the police managed to zero-in on the main accused, identified as Rajat Khanna, a native of Amritsar. He has assumed several names like Vikas Mehra, Vishal Kapoor and Rohit to dupe the businessmen.

It came to light that Rajat, along with his associates including his maternal uncle, had opened an office in Okhla and introduced himself as a major buyer. Initially, he placed small orders and paid up the businessmen without fail. All the payments were made by cheques. Thus, over a period of time he used to gain the confidence of the businessmen. In fact, he used to create goodwill enough to raise funds from the market for running his "business".

Subsequently, Rajat used to place big purchase orders. In Okhla, he had placed orders worth Rs. 1.12 crores, while to the businessmen in Chawri Bazar he had placed an order worth Rs. 84 lakhs. In Mumbai, he had allegedly cheated the businessmen of Rs. 30 lakhs.

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