Two persons, including an African national, have been arrested for allegedly duping people in the name of custom clearance from South West districts Dabri area on Monday night. Police have recovered Rs 6.70 lakh and 12 mobile phones from them. The accused Nigerian has been identified as Ifeanyi Joachin Nwafor; his wife, a resident of Assam, is the other acused. The incident came to light when the duo allegedly duped a lady social worker to the tune of Rs 1.2 lakh. Police said the complainant alleged that some months ago, a UK-based person George Moor befriended her on Facebook. Later, he requested her to accept a few gifts to be distributed to the poor in India. After a few days, she received a call from an unknown lady, who stated that she was calling from the custom office in Mumbai and that she received a parcel from UK for clearance. The victim was asked to pay custom duty of Rs 26,000 for clearance, and in July, she deposited the said amount. "Later, that lady started telling the complainant that the parcel contains very valuable items, so she will have to pay Income Tax. The next day, the complainant deposited Rs 95,600," said Anto Alphonse, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Dwarka). After receiving several calls for the money, the woman reported the matter to the police and filed a complaint, the police said. After analysing the mobile numbers, the police noticed that the accused persons had visited Assam last December, and they took out a list of passengers of all flights from New Delhi to Dimapur and from Guwahati to New Delhi. The police also obtained the details of bank accounts wherein the money had been deposited. The police also got the details of those ATMs from where the accused persons used to withdraw the amount and analysed the footage of CCTV cameras installed in the area, the police said. "During interrogation, it was found that Nwafor is from Nigeria and in 2009, he had come to India on a business visa. In 2012, he came in contact with the woman (co-accused) through Facebook, who is from Assam, and later they started living together in Delhi. They got married later in the country," Alphonse said. "Nwafor has made several fake Facebook accounts and made friends through them. The duo used to approach people through social media. After taking them into confidence, he used to tell his Facebook friends about sending precious gifts for them," he said. "Later, his wife called those victims and introduced herself as a customs officer and used to convince them to deposit money into a particular bank account. When the money was deposited, they withdrew it within hours," the DCP added.

Stay updated with all the Ahmedabad Latest News headlines here. For more exclusive & live news updates from all around India, stay connected with NYOOOZ.