Unaware of the fact that they were victims of an employment scam, as many as 28 men from Tamil Nadu were made to stand at different platforms of the New Delhi Railway Station every day for eight hours for a month to count the arrival and departure of trains and their coaches.
Job Seekers Duped of Money
According to a complaint filed with the Delhi Police’s Economic Offences Wing (EOW), they were told that it was part of their training for positions of travel ticket examiner (TTE), traffic assistants and clerks, and each of them paid amounts ranging between Rs 2 lakh and Rs 24 lakh to get the jobs in the Railways.
As per the complaint lodged by 78-year-old M Subbusamy, for a months’ ‘training’ which took place between June and July, the victims were duped of Rs 2.67 crore by a group of fraudsters.
Subbusamy, an ex-serviceman, had put the victims in touch with the alleged fraudsters, but he has claimed that he was unaware that the entire thing was a scam and he too had fallen for their trap.
25-year-old Snethil Kumar, a victim from Madurai, said that “Each candidate paid money ranging from Rs 2 lakh to Rs 24 lakh to Subbusamy who further paid these to a person named Vikas Rana. Rana posed as a deputy director in the Northern Railway office in Delhi”.
Most of the victims are graduates with backgrounds in engineering and technical education.
He added that “Though the training amount varied for various positions such as travel ticket examiners, traffic assistants or clerks, everyone underwent the same training, ie, counting trains at stations”.
Subbusamy said, “Since my retirement, I have been helping unemployed youths of our locality to find a suitable job without any monetary interest.”
In his statement, he told that he met a person named Sivaraman, a resident of Coimbatore, in one of the MP quarters in Delhi, who claimed to be very closely associated with MPs and ministers and offered to facilitate employment in the railways for the unemployed in lieu of monetary gains.
Subbusamy further alleged that Sivaraman asked him to come to Delhi along with job seekers. “Initially, I came with three job seekers and when the news of their job training spread in their villages in and around Madurai, 25 more candidates joined in,” Subbusamy said.
As per the details from FIR, these prospective candidates were called for a medical examination at the Railway Central Hospital, Connaught Place after the payment of money as facilitation charges and then for document verification at the office of the Junior Engineer, Northern Railway, Shankar Market, New Delhi on various dates.
Victims recalled how Rana always used to meet them outside for collection of money and never took them inside any Railway building. According to them, all the documents such as orders for training, identity cards, training completion certificates and appointment letters turned out to be forged when cross-verified with the Railway authorities.
Subbusamy alleged in the FIR that “After document verification, Mr Vikas Rana and Mr Dubey, one of his associates, took all the candidates to Baroda House for issuing study material and kit and also issued them forged/fabricated orders for training, which obviously we realised very late, only sometime back, when we attempted to verify its authenticity”.
The EOW in its preliminary investigation found that it was a job scam and further investigation is going on.
Railways Issue Advisories to Protect Commoners From Such Frauds
Sounding an alarm against such job scams, Yogesh Baweja, Additional Director General for Media and Communication in the Ministry of Railways, said the Railway Board has been regularly issuing advisories and alerting the common people against such fraudulent practices.
“Youngsters should be very careful while dealing with such elements and they should always contact the Railway officials concerned in such situations so that they get to the bottom of the truth as early as possible and save their hard-earned money,” Baweja said.
