Bangalore: The Central Crime Branch (CCB) police have busted a Bangalore-based job consultancy firm which allegedly cheated 14,000-odd job aspirants across the country.
The CCB sleuths raided the firm—Exalt Consulting Placement Services Private Limited in Shivajinagar—after receiving a tip-off e-mailed by a person from Delhi.
The police arrested two employees of the firm— Mohammed Shakeel, 34, and James, 24, but the proprietor Shabeer Ahmed and senior manager Mohammed Azam gave them the slip.
Around 14,000 job aspirants had registered with the firm by paying a consultancy fee of Rs 10,000 each but only seven of them were placed. Founded in 2011, the company promised jobs to the aspirants, failing which a refund of their money, a CCB officer said.
The firm collected over Rs 2.5 crore from the job aspirants. It refunded Rs 50 lakh to aspirants who could not get jobs, but a majority of them were not paid back. The CCB police suspect that the accused would contact the aspirants after lifting their profile from online job portals.
Engg student found dead
A 19-year-old engineering student was found dead in his hostel room on the premises of the CMR Institute of Technology in Mahadevapura on Thursday morning.
According to police, the deceased is Vivek Kumar Singh, a native of Jharkhand who was in his first year. On Wednesday night, he along with other room mates had dinner and went to back to the room for combined studies. After 1 am, everyone returned to their respective rooms.
At around 7 am, when the other hostelmates got ready to leave for college, they noticed that Singh’s room was still locked and thought he was sleeping. They knocked on the door of his room, but there was no response.
The students grew suspicious, opened the door and found Singh lying on the bed and not breathing. They immediately informed the warden, who reportedly delayed shifting the body to the hospital.
They also alerted the police, who shifted the body to the hospital. Doctors declared Singh brought dead and that he had breathed his last around a couple of hours ago, police said.
The students indulged in a heated argument with the warden, stating that he should have kept a check on the students. They said that the warden was nowhere to be seen and arrived late, after being informed about the incident. But the police calmed the students down and the doctors told them that Singh had died a couple of hours ago.
A senior police officer said, “There is no foul play suspected. Hostelmates of Singh told the police that he did not have any bad habits. It is suspected that he died of cardiac arrest. But the exact reason for the death can be ascertained only after the post mortem. For now, a case of unnatural death has been registered.”
According to K C Ramamurthy, chairman, CMR group of institutions, as soon as the warden was informed, he rushed there.
Case transferred
A kidnap and rape case that was registered against film producer and realtor Govardhan Murthy in a police station in Bellary was transferred to Ashok Nagar police station in Bangalore on Thursday.
According to the police, the victim, aged 28 years and a native of Mumbai, was working at a bar and restaurant in Ashok Nagar here. The victim, in her complaint, alleged that Murthy used to visit the bar frequently and befriended her.
A few months ago, he kidnapped her and took her to a farm house on the outskirts of the City and raped her. He also threatened her not to reveal the incident to anyone. Fearing for her life, the victim left for Bellary and lodged a complaint against the accused there.
