A 72 year old man has been duped of Rs.4.98 Lac, through a cheque withdrawal from his account.  The cheque was given by the victim Man Singh Pangadia to two men claiming to be representatives of a leading local newspaper.

As it happened…

On 4th May, two people visited Maan Singh Pangadia’s shop situated at Loha Bazar Chamanpura, which falls under Hathipol Police Station circle.  They introduced themselves as representatives of a well-known local daily of Udaipur.  Here they introduced a new scheme of their Newspaper, according to which, against an amount of Rs. 399 one will get the annual subscription of the newspaper, said Maan Singh.

After filling the subscription form the accused asked the victim to give a cheque of Rs. 399 instead of cash.  One of the accused filled the amount and the name of the newspaper by themselves in the cheque using their own pen and took the signatures of the victim on the cheque, where he was made to use his own pen. Very pleasingly, they assured the victim that before presenting the cheque in the bank they will call him.

On Wednesday, 6th May, at around 1 pm Pangadia received a text message on his mobile phone informing him about a withdrawal of Rs. 4.98 lakhs from his Bank account in Punjab National Bank.  Shocked by the message, he immediately rushed to the bank for verification, where he discovered that the amount was withdrawn through the same cheque that was given to the two men.  Moreover, when he reached the office of the newspaper he found that the newspaper staff neither had any information about such a scheme nor about any new staff members, Pangadia added.

Later the 72 year old victim rushed to the police station with his relatives and lodged a complaint against the accused.

Pangadia also found that the accused visited around 20 other shops of Loha Bazar area and collected cheques of Rs. 399 towards the newspaper scheme;  it was their bad luck that all the shopkeepers filled the cheques with their own pens.

CCTV cameras installed at one such shop in Loha Bazar captured the image of the miscreants and this has been verified by the CCTV footage from the Bank.

Pangadia said quite rightly that the swindlers would have used pens with washable/erasable ink to fill up the name of the beneficiary and the amount, which was later changed.