Three persons, including a former policeman, were held for allegedly duping gold traders of nearly Rs 41 lakhs in various parts of Telangana by deceitfully extracting cash from them, police said today.
Vanamala Tirumalaiah alias Tirupalaiah (58), a former police constable and a resident of Kurnool, Andhra Pradesh, was arrested along with his two accomplices - Ch Satyanarayana (45) and Vodite Srinivas Rao (45) - last night from Korutla town in the district, nearly 75 kms from here, Korutla Circle Inspector Raja Shekhar Raju said.
Tirumalaiah, who was terminated from services long ago, formed a gang and started cheating gullible businessmen by impersonating policemen, the officer said.
"The modus operandi was that the gang had made fake ID cards as sub-inspectors and used to move around villages in a four-wheeler with sticker 'police' on it. The trio met gold traders and told them that will supply the precious metal at a cheap rate of Rs 15 lakh per kg," Raju said.
"They then made the traders believe their offer by showing them original gold biscuits. Traders would then carry cash for receiving the gold in return. They use to then tactfully receive the cash and will hand over empty suitcase and disappeared from the scene," the officer added.
Recently, the accused trapped few businessmen in Korutla and managed to extract huge money from them after which some traders lodged a complaint with Korutla police.
On a tip-off, the three accused were held and a car (Tata sumo), 31 grams of gold biscuit and Rs 3 lakh cash were seized from their possession, the inspector said.
The other two members of the gang - Shekhar Reddy and Sriram - residents of Ongole in AP, are at large and efforts were on to arrest them.
During investigations, it was revealed that the gang executed four such crimes at Saroornagar, Tappachabutra of Hyderabad, Mahaboobnagar, Warangal beside Korutla and cheated traders to a tune of nearly Rs 41 lakh.
The three men were produced before a court in Korutla today, the officer added.
