The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) arrested two people accused of orchestrating a fraud involving crores of rupees by deceiving merchants and vendors under the guise of government tenders for school uniforms, the Delhi Police said Tuesday.
The accused, identified as Karunakar alias Ratnakar Upadhyay, 40, and Anita Upadhyay, 35, are alleged to have duped multiple suppliers by falsely promising them contracts under the Rashtriya Gramin Saksharta Mission (RGSM), which was claimed to be a Central government initiative.
Anita allegedly headed the fictitious RGSM trust and the Chhattisgarh Police had previously arrested the duo in a similar case, said the police.
The complainant, Capt Shivender Singh Bakshi, alleged that he had been induced under a criminal conspiracy by Anita Upadhyay and others to register as a vendor for the RGSM. He claimed that he was persuaded to supply school uniforms intended for distribution to underprivileged children across various states. However, after receiving the uniforms, the accused allegedly did not make the promised payments and instead misappropriated the goods.
They also allegedly defrauded the complainant of nearly Rs 2 crore, which he claimed to have had paid as a commission for the allotment of the tender. The police said three more similar complaints from other vendors have also been registered and are currently under investigation.
“Ratnakar Upadhyay created a fake website in the domain name of RGSM and Anita opened a bank account in the name of RGSM. The banking transactions confirm the transfer of money from the complainant’s account to RGSM’s account. Ratnakar withdrew a huge amount of Rs 3.5 crore from the RGSM trust’s account and used it for personal gain. Anita was the head of the trust, and she was also found to be a beneficiary of an amount from the RGSM account,” Amrutha Guguloth, Additional Commissioner of Police, EOW.
The police obtained a custody remand of the accused after their arrest on July 21 for further interrogation. The authorities also seized two truckloads containing approximately 45,000 school uniforms, valued at around Rs 1.5 crore, which had allegedly been supplied by one of the complainants as part of the fake tender deal.
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According to the police, Ratnakas has previously been involved in multiple criminal cases in Uttar Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, and a rape case in Delhi’s Paharganj.
