Ambala man held for duping Solan youth of Rs 6 lakh
A 30-year-old Ambala resident, Siddharth, was arrested from his native place last evening for defrauding a local youth of lakhs.
The case came to light when a woman lodged a complaint on November 15 at the Dharampur police station. She said her son Devesh Dutta had passed the Indian Maritime University examination in July 2024, after which he was given a seafarer certificate on July 8.
He received an email for an interview from a maritime academy, which is under Seafarer Educational Trust, Lajpat Nagar, New Delhi. After the interview, her son was allotted a seat for training at VELS Institute of Maritime, Chennai, following which he took admission.
Siddharth, the director of the said academy, asked the complainant to submit Rs 3.5 lakh as advance fee for her son’s course/training. She made the payment. On Siddharth’s request, she gave him a total of Rs 6,52,500 as fees and other expenses.
After two months, the college management told her son that they had not received the fees and asked him to pay the dues. When contacted on phone, they learnt that Siddharth had only paid Rs 50,000 to the college management while the remaining fees was due. Siddharth switched off his phone and disappeared after cheating them of about Rs 6 lakh.
A case under Section 318 (4) of the BNS was registered against the Ambala resident at Dharampur police station in July after receipt of a complaint from Devesh’s mother. During the investigation, the Dharampur police arrested the accused Siddharth last evening from his native place.
He was produced before a court, which has remanded him to three-day police custody. The criminal antecedents of the accused were being probed, said Solan SP Gaurav Singh.
