GUWAHATI: The criminal investigation department (CID) of Assam Police busted an “unauthorised” call centre here and picked 37 persons, including nine women, for interrogation in a fraud and cheating case.
Nineteen of the 37 picked up are from Meghalaya.
Some of them are believed to have been engaged as employees at the call centre, Avenir Pvt Ltd, located on the second floor of a rented accommodation covering 3000 square feet area in the Zoo-Narengi Road area.
“One of them suspected to be the main accused hails from Gujarat. He had fled the call centre when the CID team conducted the night operation but was apprehended from Nehru Park here this afternoon. We are investigating the case,” L.R. Bishnoi, additional DGP, CID, told the media here on Tuesday.
As many as 28 monitors, 40 central processing units, two pen drives, one laptop and 32 mobile phones including other objectionable items have been recovered and seized.
A case (No CID PS 12/2019) under sections 120B, 419, 420, 468, 471 and 384 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Section 66 of the Information Technology Act, 2000 has been registered against the accused.
The call centre, which operated from 7pm to 5am (office hours in America) had a database of over seven lakh American citizens since operation from February, 2019.
The employees who were engaged in “call bursting” for three days a week were paid Rs 20,000 and Rs 12,000 as salary apart from rewards, accommodation and transport
CID sources said that brokers involved in the operations got a commission and that transactions done by the centre itself were recorded to be Rs 50lakh per month.
“The accused had paid Rs 2lakh per month to the house owner as monthly rent,” Bishnoi said.
“The house owner might not have known about the nature of operations and some employees who have joined over the past few days too may not know about the unauthorised operations. Things will be clear once the investigation is completed,” he said.