3 from Mumbai held for operating bogus finance company

Nagpur, Oct 15 (UNI) Police have arrested three persons, all from Mumbai, for allegedly cheating people by operating a bogus finance company here.

According to police, the trio, identified as Sandip Shivlal Yadav (32), a resident of Ulhasnagar in Thane district, Manoj Baliram Dhumal (28), a resident of Santacruz, and Sudarshan alias Sanju Pandurang Jadhav (22), a resident of Mankhurd, opened an office in the city in the name of Shri Laxmi Finance and Investment Company.

They released advertisements in some local newspapers promising easy loans, police said.

Responding to the advertisement, one Vyankat Rambhau Kale (27), a resident of Umrer near here, applied for a loan of Rs 1 lakh.

Kale had to pay 5 per cent of the loan amount along with the application as per the terms of the company, and also deposited his identity card, blank cheques and his PAN (Permanent Account Number) card with them, the release added.

The company gave him a post-dated cheque for the loan amount, drawn on the Umrer branch of a nationalised bank.

Getting suspicious, Kale made enquiries with the bank, and came to know that the cheque given to him by the company was actually drawn on an account belonging to one Vasant Baliram Shende (35), also a resident of Umrer, the police said.

It was later revealed that Shende had also applied to Shri Laxmi Finance and Investment Company for a loan and had given them blank cheques at the time.

The company had issued to Kale one of the cheques received from Shende, the police informed.

On the basis of a complaint from Shende, the police registered an offence under sections 420 (cheating), 464 (making a false statement), 467 (forgery of valuable security), 486 (selling goods marked with a counterfeit property mark), 471 (using as genuine a forged document) and 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), and arrested the three.

UNI