Gurgaon Police: Lateral Thinking Stops BPO Theft
By Nitin Paul

In an unusual twist of events in the ITeS hub Gurgaon perhaps reported for the first time, the police have registered a case of cheating against the officials of a BPO on the charges of illegally hooking to the leased communication line of another BPO and allegedly causing a loss of a million rupees to the complainant.

Both the BPOs are situated in the same building complex in Electronics City here. According to the Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP)  Maharaj Singh, the owner of Amtek BPO Mangi Aggarwal claimed that another BPO PCLIT had illegally chipped in to his company’s leased communication line connected to the USA, and used it for calling USA without him knowing about it. Mangi came to know of the fraud when he received the inflated call bill from the service provider, the police official said. After detecting the fraud, he informed the police department.

A team of cyber crime cell led by the ACP Sumit Kumar raided the premises. The team used a novel method of detecting the fraud in the presence of the complainant and alleged fraudsters. On the direction of the police, BPO Amtek asked its service provider to discontinue its service to their company temporarily by disconnecting the leased line.

This temporary disconnection not only affected the process of Amtek BPO, but that of PCLIT also got hampered and the employees of both the BPOs came out of their offices. The police also seized two computers to collect proof of calls made to the USA. The DCP said that a case of fraud and theft had been registered against four officials of the PCLIT under section 420 (cheating) and 379 (theft) of Indian Penal Code (IPC) and further investigations into the complaint were underway.

No arrest was made since the FSL (Forensic Science Laboratory) report on the seized hard disk drive is being prepared to be handed over to the Gurgaon policemen. If the documentary evidence (FSL report) proves that that PCLIT officials had made illegal use of the leased line of Amtek for calling USA, all the four accused would be arrested and sent to jail, the DCP Maharaj Singh said.