Kerala couple flee after cheating over Rs 50 Cr through chit fund schemes in Bengaluru
Bengaluru, Jul 9 (PTI): A couple hailing from Kerala, running a chit fund company in Bengaluru, fled after allegedly cheating more than 1,300 investors of over Rs 50 crore here, police said on Wednesday.
A majority of the people who have invested in their schemes are Keralites, they said.
The matter came to light after one of the investors, PT Savio, who claimed to have lost Rs 70 lakh in the scheme, approached the officials at the Ramamurthy Nagar police station on July 5, police said.
Based on the complaint, a case under Chit Funds Act, relevant section of the Banning of Unregulated Deposit Schemes Ordinance 2019, and sections 318 (cheating), 316 (criminal breach of trust) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita was registered against Tomy A and his wife Shini Tomy, proprietors of A&A Chit Funds and Finance in the Ramamurthy Nagar area in Bengaluru, police said.
Following his complaint, several investors came forward with complaints after they found that the firm's office was locked and the couple unreachable.
According to police, so far, they have received 265 formal complaints against the couple, who have settled in Bengaluru for a long time.
Citing a preliminary investigation, a senior police officer said that the couple had allegedly sold their apartment, switched off their phones, and disappeared. The couple reportedly started the business around 2005, had been collecting money through various deposit and chit schemes, promising high returns.
The operation continued for nearly two decades before collapsing recently, he said.
A manhunt has been launched to trace the accused, police said, adding that the true scale of the fraud could be much larger.
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8 dead, dozens wounded in Russian strike on Ukraine's Odesa port
Kyiv (AP): Eight people were killed and 27 wounded in a Russian missile strike on port infrastructure in Odesa, southern Ukraine, late on Friday, Ukraine's Emergency Service said on Saturday morning.
Some of the wounded were on a bus at the epicentre of the overnight strike, the service said in a Telegram post. Trucks caught fire in the parking lot, and cars were also damaged.
The port was struck with ballistic missiles, said Oleh Kiper, the head of the Odesa region.
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Elsewhere, Ukrainian forces hit a Russian warship and other facilities with drones, Ukraine's General Staff said in a statement on Saturday.
The nighttime attack on Friday hit the Russian warship “Okhotnik,” according to the statement posted to the Telegram messaging app.
The ship was patrolling in the Caspian Sea near an oil and gas production platform. The extent of the damage is still being clarified, the statement added.
A drilling platform at the Filanovsky oil and gas field in the Caspian Sea was also hit. The facility is operated by Russian oil giant Lukoil. Ukrainian drones also struck a radar system in the Krasnosilske area of Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
