Thane: Man cheats person of Rs 26 lakh by posing as CBI officer

The police announced on Wednesday that a 43-year-old man from Maharashtra's Thane district had been detained for allegedly impersonating a CBI inspector and defrauding a person of Rs 26 lakh.

The 51-year-old victim from Mira Road area was a partner in a metal refining company in neighbouring Palghar which was engaged in the purchase of scrapped batteries, recycling and extracting lead from them and selling the same in the market, Kashimira police station's senior police inspector Sandeep Kadam said quoting the FIR.

The office of the GST commissioner had inquired into the purchase of waste batteries, pointing out some errors in the transactions in 2021–2022, and had sent a notice to the company. According to the FIR, the victim gave the GST commissioner all of his transactional paperwork and was awaiting a clear bill of health. The victim asked his friends for advice when there was a delay in the situation, and they suggested he contact a man who was also from this area's Mira Road, it claimed.

The man posed as a CBI commissioner and offered to help the victim. He allegedly took money from the victim on different occasions between August 2022 and April this year, the FIR said. He also suggested to the victim some investment options and took money while promising good returns, it said. The accused had also displayed a board on his car claiming to be a CBI officer, it stated.

The victim, however, neither got a clean chit in the GST matter nor the promised returns on investments. The accused later gave evasive replies that he had invested the money in gutka business which ran into losses, the police said.  The victim filed a police complaint on Sunday, and the accused was arrested on Monday and booked under Indian Penal Code sections 420 (cheating), 406 (criminal breach of trust) and 170 (personating a public servant), the official said.