The Bengaluru police has registered an FIR against several people who posed as Infosys employees to dupe a firm of Rs 6 crore. A complaint was filed by Mysore Mercantile Company last month — alleging that a person named Gagan N Deep had approached them claiming he was the Regional Head for CSR at Infosys. He had promised funds to the Heggunje Rajeeva Shetty Charitable Trust run by the company and sent ’employees’ to verify its activities.
According to a PTI report, the FIR was registered on March 30, and the crime is said to have taken place between September 1 last year and March 20. Deep claimed that he reported to senior (and very real) Infosys officials — such as senior vice president Niladri Prasad Mishra and senior regional manager Harsh J. He had also sent a team purportedly representing Infosys to various places in in Karnataka (including Udupi, Mangaluru) to verify the activities of the Trust.
Company duped of Rs 6 crore
The Mysore Mercantile Company said Deep had subsequently sought financial assurances — asking the complainant to pay an Earnest Money Deposit to alleged regular vendors of Infosys as a condition for approval of CSR grants.
A total of Rs 6 crore was paid to these individuals over the course of several months. This included payment of Rs 1.75 crore through demand drafts in favour of Anitha Ventures and Rs 3.75 crore through demand drafts in favour of ANS Engineerings. An additional cash payment of Rs 30 lakh was also handed to the accused through his driver during a clandestine meeting.
The FIR also alleges that Deep issued a ‘sanction letter’ in October last year — purportedly from Infosys and bearing the signature of Mishra. He also executed a grant agreement dated January 8 between Infosys and the charitable trust for the construction of more than 855 houses across Karnataka with a total grant of Rs 179 crore. A second grant agreement was executed days later for for construction of primary health care centres across the state with a total amount of Rs 178 crore.
How did the matter come to light?
The complainant had eventually begun suspecting that the representations made by Deep were false, the documents fabricated, and the entire transaction fraudulent in nature. The scammers had repeatedly pushed them to part with substantial amounts under the pretext of EMD for CSR grants — but the grants did not materialise.
“Despite repeated follow-ups neither has any grant materialised nor have the amounts been returned, and the accused is now unresponsive and deliberately avoiding communication,” the FIR added.
A case has been registered under various provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and a police investigation remains underway. |
