Gurugram, October 16: The Haryana chief minister's flying squad late on Thursday night busted yet another illegal call centre operating from the Udyog Vihar Phase-1 in Gurugram.

The investigation team suspect that the owner of the call centre was a contractor at the Municipal Corporation, Gurugram (MCG).

The call centre used to cheat mostly US nationals on the pretext of providing technical support and used to charge 300 to 700 dollars as service charge per client, the police said on Friday. The accused had also paid Rs 48 lakh as building rent for three months.

The police have arrested six persons in connection with the matter and have seized two laptops, two hard disks, CPU and other electronic gadgets from the spot.

The arrested persons have been identified as Abhinandan Kumar of Dwarka, New Delhi, the alleged MCG contractor and the owner of the fake call centre, Sunit Gautam of Hauz Khas, New Delhi the manager, Saurav of Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh, Ajay of Palam, New Delhi, Huidrom Samson MeiteI of Manipur and Harender of Chirag Delhi.

The four accused were members of the technical team of the gang. According to the police, a team from the CM's flying squad raided the call centre after a tip-off at plot number 108, Sector-20 of Udyog Vihar Phase-1.

There they spotted 65 women and men including the arrested suspects, who were working at the fake call centre and were with US nationals. However, after questioning, the police have released the youth who were working there.

"A complaint was received that a fake call centre had cheated several people on the pretext of a technical support in Udyog Vihar. The youths were employed at the call centres, which were being operated without licence issued by the Department of Telecommunications (DOT)," said a senior officer of the CM's flying squad.

"During the questioning, the accused Abhinandan revealed that the call centre was running with the name 'Shiv Shakti Global Enterprises'. They used to send virus links through pop-ups on porn sites and once their alleged customer clicked on these links the virus got into their system and to resolve this issue they used to charge nearly 300 to 700 dollars per client as service charge via bank account provided by the main accused Abhinandan," he added.

The fake call centre had been running since August, 2020, and the culprits had earned crores by duping people. "The matter is under investigation. How the accused was operating the fake call centre is part of an investigation. The involvement of other people cannot be ruled out," the officer said.

An FIR under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the IT Act has been registered.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Oct 16, 2020 08:39 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).