Police arrests man accused of running insurance scam

The Crime Branch of Delhi Police today claimed to have busted a fake call centre, which was allegedly running an insurance scam to cheat people, with the arrest of an Uttar Pradesh native.
Police arrested 23-year-old Atul Sharma, a native of Aligarh in UP, on December 13, from Khoda Colony in Ghaziabad.
Atul is accused of enticing innocent persons on the pretext of providing huge bonus on existing insurance policies and then cheating them in the name of depositing different taxes and charges for clearing the bonus amounts, police has said in a release.
Police said it had swung into action after a senior citizen, residing in Shimla, lodged an FIR saying he was duped of Rs 8.5 lakh on the pretext of depositing service charges for receiving a bonus amount of Rs 42 lakh on his existing Birla Life insurance policies.

The gang had extracted the money from him over a period of three months by asking him to deposit it in various bank accounts, it said.
After the FIR was lodged at Shimla, police here received information that such a racket was active in Delhi and NCR and formed a team to nab the culprits.

The team got a tip regarding presence of the gang in the area of Khoda Colony in Ghaziabad and thereafter, a trap was laid and Atul was nabbed.
Police said that two mobile phones and a SIM card used in committing the offence were recovered from him.

On Sharma's interrogation, it came to the fore that Atul had an accomplice, Tarun Sharma, whom he had met while working at a call centre dealing in SIM cards and insurance. Tarun is still at large, police said.
The duo had procured the data regarding insurance policies of victims including their contact numbers while working at the call centre, police said, adding that the details of victims were being verified through bank statements of Atul.