Chennai: The Ramanathapuram police busted an online racket and arrested a Tamil Nadu-based film producer for luring a businessman by creating a replica of the Locanto classifieds website and cheating him of Rs 75 lakh, with false promise to the trader that he can meet actress Kajal Aggarwal.
The accused, identified as Saravana Kumar alias Gopala Krishnan, was arrested from a lodge in Ashok Nagar here. They said the case came to light after the victim, son of a businessman in Ramanathapuram, allegedly attempted to commit suicide after he lost Rs 75 lakh to the accused.
Police said, the father of the victim lodged a complaint with Ramanathapuram SP last month that his son had gone missing. A special team, formed for the purpose, was unable to get any clues. Earlier this week, the complainant received a call from his son who said he wanted to end his life, and cut the call abruptly.
Ramanathapuram police who had recorded the call traced the victim to Kolkata. A police team rushed to West Bengal and rescued the victim. He was brought to Ramanathapuram and during questioning, shocking details of him being lured by a man who used the name of an Indian actress through a fake website tumbled out.
The victim said his friends had told him about a website through which he could meet actresses. When he tried to log in to the website a few months back, he was asked to register. A man immediately called him up and asked him to make a payment of Rs 50,000 to a bank account, after which he would send him pictures of the actresses from which he could select one.
The man selected South Indian actress Kajal Aggarwal and sent him the contact details. After he selected an actress, the accused called him again asking the victim to pay Rs 50,000. After this, the man started sending him inappropriate website links. The caller then threatened the victim that if he did not send Rs 75 lakh to a bank account, the phone conversations and the website links would be sent to all his relatives.
Realising that he had been cheated, he sent Rs 75 lakh to the bank account and ran away from home to Kolkata to commit suicide, when he was rescued.
Later, police tracked down the bank account to a man in Sivagangai who had just released his debut movie as a director. The director Manikandan said his bank account was handled by his producer, Saravana Kumar. Police arrested the latter from Chennai.
Police said that they recovered Rs 10 lakh cash and a cell phone from him.
