3 booked in Garshankar for scamming e-commerce firm of lakhs

The Garhshankar police have registered a case against three people for defrauding an e-commerce firm of lakhs. The case is about a branch of an e-commerce company located near the NRI Market Complex, near the Central Bank, Hoshiarpur road, Garhshankar.

The delivery personnel of the firm’s branch would deliver goods to customers but mark the orders as cancelled from their end, only to return packages containing cheaper versions of the items or sometimes even rocks and bricks, thereby cheating e-commerce companies of lakhs. This embezzlement came to light when many orders were returned to the company with wrong goods and the assistant manager of the investigation department of the company filed a complaint.

In his complaint to the police, Asees Chahal, a resident of Bhagdu Kalan, Jind, Haryana, said he was the Assistant Manager at the fraud prevention and investigation wing in Shadowwax Technology Private Limited, a company based in Bengaluru. The company had a branch in Garhshankar, which was operated by Charanjit Singh, a resident of Sekhe Mazara, Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar, NRI Market, Garhshankar.

He said the dealt in e-commerce and third party deliveries for other e-commerce firms such as Flipkart, Meesho, Myntra, Ajio etc. When many parcels, containing wrong or sub-standard items were returned from this branch, on August 23, 2024, the branch was inspected and it was found that this branch was being run by Sahil and his brother Harpreet Singh in place of Charanjit Singh.

During the investigation about 63 shipments, marked for replacement or cancellation were found in the branch, amounting to Rs 2,10,980. It was also uncovered that Sahil and his brother, Harpreet, made fake orders on Flipkart and received shipments, took out the actual products and returned cheap copies of these to the company. It was also found that they placed fake orders for customers, took money from them after delivering the wrong items and later cancelled the orders, sending back replaced sub-standard goods. The accused did not install CCTV cameras in the branch as per the instructions of the company so that there was no evidence of the crime, said the assistant manager. He also claimed that when he exposed the embezzlement in the branch, Sahil’s brother, Harpreet, threatened him of killing him.

The company said the branch had 440 shipments, worth Rs 1,59,092 and they were refusing to return these. Additionally, they had not paid the company more than Rs 1 lakh against cash on delivery orders. The complaint was investigated by Deputy Superintendent of Police-cum-Chief Officer Cyber ??Crime, Hoshiarpur. On the basis of whose report, a case was registered at the Garhshankar police station against Charanjit Singh, a resident of Sheikh Mazara, Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar district, Sahil and Harpreet, both residents of Kot Ranjha, under Sections 318 (4), 316 (2), 61 (2) the BNS.