New Delhi: As many as 178 youth in a village in Punjab’s Gurdaspur was duped of Rs 2.3 Crore in the name of job opportunities in Canada. The victim introduced himself as a senior Human Resource Executive to a business from Uttar Pradesh’s Ghaziabad seeking nearly 500 youth to work in various field in Canada.
Accused Popinder Singh who is an NRI found Palwinder Singh as a victim and tasked him to find young people willing to accept jobs in Canada. Palwinder returned to his village, Chawa, thinking he would be able to provide employment to youth in his village.
Tempting Offers
The task was not too difficult to be achieved as there were many young people who aspired to have career abroad. The salary packages were also good. The company was offering a monthly minimum wage, which is much higher than what some of them earn in a year- 3,380 Canadian dollars (Rs 2 lakh).
As tempting as it sounds, around 178 youth agreed to accept the job offer. They were also willing to pay for the visas and other documents.
“He said he was handling recruitment for a company called Zenith Manpower Services, Canada. Since he needed to hire 500 young people in the next few months, I went back to the village and asked around. The offer is quite attractive. Soon, I had a list of 178 youths who agreed to pay for visas and other documents,” Palwinder said in his complaint, quoted TOI.
178 Paid For Plane Tickets But Found a Disturbing Pattern
Following the agreement, all 178 young people paid for the process, which was from Rs 80,000 to Rs 1. 5 lakh each. Out of which, 61 people had also recieved plane tickets and invitations sent home. However, they found their tickets cancelled after three days but they were assured their tickets would be rebooked.
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Youth received the secind batch but the pattern of booking and cancellation repeated for the third time. This casued suspicion among the job aspirants who then decided to visit the Canadian embassy in Delhi. They found the documents the embassy recieved were forged.
At this point, the recruiters who had shared their phone numbers with job seekers switched off their phones.
Vivek Yadav, DCP (rural), said an FIR has been registered against Popinder and Preeti under sections 406 (criminal breach of trust), 420 (cheating), 467 (forgery), 120B (conspiracy crime), 468 (forgery) and 471 (use of false document as authentication) of CIB.
