BSNL duped of Rs 43 lakh

vadodara: yet another mastermind alleged to have been involved in the telecom scam was nabbed by the city police here. detection of crime branch (dcb) of the city police nabbed one ketan thakkar accused of duping the bharat sanchar nigam ltd of rs 43 lakh. thakkar allegedly connected people staying abroad with their relatives and acquaintances in india.his modus operandi consisted of identifying people abroad who wanted to make calls to india. he would later call both the parties from separate lines in the same premises and then connect them using a patching-up device (conferencing device). an offence regarding the incident was filed in november last year. thakkar was nabbed by dcb sleuths from the green hotel on r c dutt road. investigating officers said thakkar had agents in several countries who called him up to give him a list of persons who wanted to talk to people in india. thakkar later called all these persons and patched them up to their counterparts in india using another telephone line. thakkar had allegedly rented two houses in the city for the purpose. these include the house of one mulji patel in subhanpura, and another one, that of bhavana jayprakash in arunoday society. each of these houses had two telephone connections. officers of the economic offence cell of dcb, which is investigating the case, said thakkar had received calls from countries from the gulf as well as sri lanka, indonesia, iraq, iran besides others. these were then patched up to in delhi, kolkata, mumbai and other cities in india. thakkar was paid the amount through courier by his agents. however, he had received only one instalment of rs 1 lakh through a courier in mumbai. he had managed to operate for 45 to 50 days before telecom department officials became suspicious. irritated by this, thakkar allegedly put the wires of a telephone connection in an electric socket and passed current through the telephone line. investigations in the case have revealed the names of four other persons. they are hemant alias kano thakkar from kolkata; bilal alias babloo of mumbai; akshan from azamgadh and tina from ahmedabad. the police is yet to get the full names and location of the rest of the accused. however, it believes that hemant's kolkata address is fake.