A week after two persons were booked for allegedly duping a city resident of around ₹58 lakh on the pretext of depositing the processing fee and taxes against a ₹3.5 crore loan, police’s cybercrime branch arrested the accused.

The duo has been identified as Tarun Kumar, a polytechnic diploma graduate from Bhiwani, Haryana, and Abhishek Pal, a BA graduate from Hardoi. The former had earlier been arrested by the Gurugram Police in another loan fraud case.

The complainant, Krishan Chand Sokhey of Sector 8, who owns a nursing hostel at Desumajra in Mohali, needed money for the hostel’s expansion. Detailing his interaction with the accused, he said, “I wanted to avail a loan of ₹3.5 crore. I saw an advertisement in a Hindi vernacular in July 2020 stating that the said company was giving a loan of ₹2 crore at 2% interest, following which I contacted at the given numbers.”

After receiving a sanction letter of loan amounting ₹2 lakh on a condition that Sokhey would have to pay ₹2.36 lakh loan processing fee. After paying the amount, the accused kept seeking money in different transactions from the complainant against the complete loan of ₹3.5 crore till December 17, 2022.

“I kept depositing money to them but I did not get the loan. They cheated me by making fake company papers. I paid them around ₹58 lakh between July 2020 to December 2022,” complainant added.

A team headed by superintendent of police (SP) Ketan Bansal and station house officer (SHO) Ranjit Singh nabbed the accused from Gurugram.

Police have registered a case under Sections 419 (cheating by personation), 420 (cheating), 467 (forgery of valuable security), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (fraudulently using a genuine document), 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of Indian Penal Code (IPC) .