Bhubaneswar/Calcutta: A 24-year-old man, Rakesh Pradhan, was arrested from Chandrasekharpur in Bhubaneswar for allegedly duping the son of a former Kolkata Police commissioner in an online PG booking scam.
The victim, a 23-year-old resident of South Calcutta, was searching for paying guest accommodations in Delhi in late January when he came across a fraudulent listing. After transferring an initial amount of Rs3,000 to the purported owner, he was repeatedly asked to pay additional sums due to “technical glitches,” eventually sending a total of Rs24,093 before realizing he had been cheated.
Investigators traced the money trail to Pradhan, who had invested parts of the funds in apps such as “Kamai Kendra” and “Kimi”, raising suspicions of a larger organized racket. He was apprehended from a rented room in Sailashree Vihar and brought to Calcutta on transit remand. Two mobile phones and a SIM card were recovered from him.
Police confirmed that the swindled money had initially been transferred to a nationalised bank account in Chandrasekharpur and later withdrawn from an ATM on Pragati Enclave Main Road. Investigations are ongoing to uncover the full extent of the scam network.
