Nagpur: Cyber complaint cell (C3 unit) of city police crime branch on Saturday arrested two persons, including an engineer, from Ballarshah in Chandrapur after busting a racket. They had duped more than 300 people on the pretext of availing job in 'Pradhan mantri kaushal vikas yojana' which is a scheme coordinated by National skill development corporation under Government of India's ministry of skill development and entrepreneurship.The racketeers may have pocketed a sum of around Rs12 lakh. The accused had contacted 2408 job aspirants including 1771 from 42 districts of Maharashtra. Maximum aspirants, contacted by the racketeers, are from Pune (108), followed by Nagpur (106) and Jalgaon (94). The job aspirants from Goa, Ahmedabad and Meerut in Uttar Pradesh were also contacted by the racketeers who had set up a call centre, employing nine women and two men, to coordinate with the job aspirants. In the probe so far, it has come to fore that mostly the middle-class population and ones from weak economic strata of the society have been duped.C3 Unit, after receiving complaint from Shashidharan Sahare from city, zeroed down upon the call-centre, arresting mastermind of the racket Pravinkumar Balmikiprasad (44) and Arun Trivedi (32) from Chandrapur before registering an offence of forgery, cheating and destruction of evidences among others at Sadar police station. The duo was remanded in custody for two days. Police have recovered three computers, one laptop, one colour printer, 15 mobile phones and substantial fake government documents. They have also seized Rs1.06 lakh cash. Police have also recovered 19 SIM cards from the duo.DCP, crime (Economic offence wing and Cyber) Shweta Khedkar said Balmikiprasad and Trivedi had repeatedly published advertisements in different newspapers to attract job aspirants by furnishing mobile phone numbers. "The job aspirants would be told by the call centre employees to send their documents and details on a fake e-mail id. After around 10 days, the job aspirants would be informed about their selection in different posts like that of supervisor for distance education and asked to deposit amount ranging from Rs2,500 to 3,500 for training in the account number furnished by them," she said. "The accused duo would furnish fake scheme certificates and affidavits printed by them," said the DCP.Khedkar, flanked by ACP (crime) Ashwini Patil and API Vishal Mane, said the racketeers used to procure documents from the victims to open bank accounts and also purchase SIM cards which were used to make calls. "The SIM cards would be discarded once the payments would be deposited. This made the aspirants doubtful about the racketeers and they approached cops," she said.Speaking about mastermind Balmikiprasad, Khedkar said he has vast experience of working in schemes floated by state or central governments which he used to kick-start the racket. "The racketeers had opened bank accounts in the name of persons residing in UP and Bihar," she said.Four post graduates students, who aspired for government jobs through PMKVY, shared with TOI how they were duped in online fraud under the scheme. One MBA student claimed, "I wanted to work in government sector like most of my family members," She added the racketeers' manner and fluency of responding the phone calls, describing the work profile and future prospects were very luring.

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