Fake insurance agents dupe retired Panchkula Major General of Rs 83 lakh

PANCHKULA: Fake insurance agents duped a retired Major General of Rs 83.16 lakh on policies from 2010 till now.

Colonel Parminder Singh (retd), son of Major General Bachittar Singh (retd), a resident of Sector 2, said in his police complaint that fake agents who introduced themselves as employees of Aegon Religare (an insurance company) — Ajay Sharma, Jagmohan Tiwari, Avinash Pathak, Ashish Gupta, Surya Narayan and Nirmal Sharma, among others — committed fraud, misrepresentation, distortion and embezzlement after forging insurance policy documents.

In his complaint, Parminder Singh said all these fake agents lured his father into buying policies of Aegon Religare in 2010. But instead of issuing one policy, they fraudulently issued three in favour of him and other family members and then the principal amount of premium was refunded. In 2014, the father of the complainant received several calls through landline and cellphones and the callers said a premium of Rs 5 lakh on all three policies was pending in his Aegon Religare account. The accused further lured him by stating, “Why don’t you claim this money?” They then made him deposit more money to claim Rs 5 lakh.

The Aegon Religare account already had his Rs 87,38,403. When the accused learned about it, they sent him fake letters from the income tax department and the Reserve Bank of India, saying he should pay taxes on the amount. When Bachittar Singh took up the matter with one of the fake agents and sought release of his amount from Aegon Religare account, an accused, Surya Narayanan, called him up in March 2018, saying he could help him evade the tax if he transferred Rs 87,38,403 from his Aegon Religare account to a private bank account in Ghaziabad.

Bachittar Singh fell in the trap and transferred Rs 83.16 lakh through cheques, NEFT and RTGS to the private bank account. The accused assured that the said amount would be deposited in his bank account soon. When the victim contacted the bank in Ghaziabad, they informed that the amount from this account has been transferred to some other account. When Bachittar Singh asked fake agents to return his money, he was threatened with dire consequences.

Police have registered a case under sections 406 (punishment for criminal breach of trust), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 467 (forgery of valuable security, will, etc.), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (using as genuine a forged document or electronic record), 120-B (criminal conspiracy) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the IPC at Sector 5 police station. Sector 5 SHO inspector Rajeev Kumar said, “We have registered the case and investigation is under progress.”

Source: The Times of India