The 24-year-old son of a senior Gujarat IPS officer has come under the Thane police’s scanner for playing a major role in the scam where employees of eight call centres in the district extorted US cit
The 24-year-old son of a senior Gujarat IPS officer has come under the Thane police’s scanner for playing a major role in the scam where employees of eight call centres in the district extorted US citizens in the name of their tax and immigration authorities.
The Thane police sources claimed that the absconding mastermind of the scam, Sagar Thakkar (23), knew the high-profile suspect and had allegedly paid him about 30 per cent of the earnings from his dubious activities.
Thakkar, an Ahmedabad resident, allegedly paid the police officer’s son to shield around 100 Ahmedabad-based call centres of his from the authorities, sources said.
Some few Gujarat policemen are also being probed to ascertain their role, if any, in the call centres’ activities.
Sources said, “The IPS officer’s son was misusing the position of his father who has been serving with the Ahmedabad police since 2013, and helping his friend/business partner to protect around 100 of his call centres in Ahmedabad.”
“After Thakkar’s father’s business suffered losses, the family shifted to Ahmedabad. Thakkar started working in a call centre where he used to earn '4,000 per month but he left the job after he didn’t receive pay for six months. Later, he and four of his friends decided to start their own call centre, which was legal. However, the venture failed. He then met the IPS officer’s son and the two of them and two others started an illegal call centre chain and became millionaires within a few months,” said an officer.
A Thane police team, after receiving information about Thakkar, went to Gujarat in search of him, but returned empty handed as he had fled to Dubai, UAE on October 7, two days after the police arrested more than 70 employees of four call centres located at Mira Road. The team raided five fake call centres in Ahmedabad a few days ago.
Its employees were contacting US citizens telephonically via Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) in the name of the American tax authority, the Internal Revenue Service, and asking for penalty payments in lieu of alleged taxation-related irregularities, said a police source. The source said Thakkar allegedly shut down a call centre being run by him in Ahmedabad’s Vastrapur, emptying it of its belongings, before vanishing. The police is set to pick up several of Thakkar’s aides who are based in Maharashtra to get clues about his whereabouts and the wider conspiracy.
