HYDERABAD: Two persons were booked by Bahadurpura police on Tuesday for collecting money through
crowdfunding
on the pretext of providing urgent treatment to ailing persons .
The accused, Salman Khan (29), chief of an
unregistered NGO
called Hyderabad Youth Courage, and Syed Ayub (31), organiser of the NGO, had been arrested by Chandrayangutta police in a similar case only a fortnight ago.
The complainant, Syed Imran Ali from MO Colony in Bahadurpura, saw a video on the
social media account
of Hyderabad Youth Courage (HYC) in May showing a woman with her son in a hospital, crying for help.
“With an intention to help the family, I reached out to Salman Khan and called him to my office at Bahadurpura. He made me speak to the patient from his phone,” said the complainant.
Imran Ali transferred Rs 3 lakh to Salman, after raising the money through his friends. Later, Imran Ali found the group had allegedly collected Rs 40 lakh from various persons. He learnt that only Rs 5 lakh were given to the family, while Salman and Syed Ayub kept the rest. The police registered a case against the duo for criminal breach of trust and
cheating
, based on Imran’s complaint.
In the earlier case, Salman had posted a video seeking help for a woman suffering from a chronic ailment. In the video, he mentioned the bank account number of her relative, Asra Begum, for collecting donations.
The police had said that within three days, donations of lakhs of rupees were made to the account. Asra transferred Rs 15 lakh to Salman’s bank account and Rs 15 lakh into the account of Rasheed, a relative of Ayub. She kept the balance Rs 16 lakh.