Mumbai con couple, kin dupe investors of over Rs5.3crore, held

A couple and their relative have been arrested for allegedly duping over hundreds of people to the tune of Rs 5.31 crore in the pretext of doubling their money.

The arrested accused have been identified as Amulya Waskar, 45, his wife Vaishali, 40, and cousin brother Sachin Palkar, 40, all residents of Borivli (West). The trio run a firm called Raj Investment and took money from people assuring them to give them quadrupled profit.

According to the police, the incident came into light after one of the victim, Kalpana Pakhurde, who works in a private bank as a clerk approached the Borivli police and lodged complaint against them. In her complaint, she said she knew Waskar as he was her bank’s client.

“In 2003, Waskar told Pakhurde that he had several clients. The  people who had invested in his firm had got huge profit. He also insisted that she should invest in his firm to get quadrupled profit within three years. Pakhurde then invested the money and also convinced her colleagues to invest” said assistant police inspector Dilip Shinde. “Pakhurde had invested Rs 24.81lakh as of now. Earlier, she used get returns. But after 2010,  she did not get anything.  When she approached them,  they made several excuses. Other investors slowly started not receiving their money,” said the police.

The victim then suspected foul play and approached the police and lodged a complaint against them. “As of now, 154 people have lodged complaint against them and we calculated the cheating amount to the tunes of Rs5.31crore.  More people from Mumbai, Thane,  Pune, Satara and Raigad  are still approaching us,” said Shinde.

The accused have been remanded in police custody till January 17.