Amritsar: Punjab Police has arrested a man accused of impersonating a police officer and cheating shopkeepers in Amritsar by posing as an SHO and other officials to obtain goods fraudulently.
The accused has been identified as Sukha Singh alias Sukhdeep Singh, a resident of Rajpura in Patiala district. Police said seven criminal cases have already been registered against him.
The fraud came to light during the investigation of an FIR registered at Civil Lines police station on the complaint of the owner of Bhatia Gun House in Amritsar.
According to the complaint, the accused called the gun house owner, introduced himself as the SHO of Civil Lines police station and demanded a pistol. He initially asked that the weapon be delivered to the police station but later changed the delivery location over the phone.
Believing the caller to be a genuine police officer, the gun house owner sent the pistol through an employee. The employee later told police that the person who collected the weapon was dressed in a police uniform.
The fraud was exposed when the gun house owner contacted the actual SHO regarding payment. Police subsequently registered a case and arrested the accused.
During interrogation, investigators found that the accused allegedly gathered information about well-known companies through social media before targeting small businesses. He would call shopkeepers posing as a company representative or a senior official, claim that an employee would collect the goods and assure them that payment would be made later.
Police said the investigation revealed that both the caller and the person who arrived to collect the goods were the same individual.
