DIMAPUR, JUNE 19 (MExN): There is no dearth of finance related scams in Nagaland engineered by fraud companies, societies and individuals alike. All the more not helped by people lured by dreams of riches overnight.
Field agents of a year-old national welfare society are now at wits end after it was discovered that the employers decamped with lakhs of rupees collected as application fees from grant-seeking entrepreneurs in Nagaland. The agents were recruited by a (National Capital Territory of) Delhi registered society under the nomenclature - Society for Child and Women Empowerment (SCWE).
Fortunately, the founders of the society, who engineered the scam, are under arrest. The con-artistes, identified as Amit Kumar Singh of Raipur, Chattisgarh and Raja Chandan Kunal of Nawadah, Bihar were arrested from Guwahati on June 6 by the Bureau of Investigation for Economic Offences (BIEO); and are presently under the custody of Dimapur police. However, the woes of the agents do not end there.
It all started back in January when the SCWE floated advertisements inviting applications from unemployed youths of the north-east states to work as ‘Field Officers’ of the society. The society also addressed a press conference in Guwahati in the month of February announcing the commencement of a craftsmen empowerment project particularly targeted at entrepreneurs of the region. The announcement was made by Kunal who designated himself as Human Resource and Operations Manager of the SCWE. Singh, according to documents, is the founding president-cum-Chief Managing Director of the society and the brains behind the sell-out.
According to the announcement, simultaneously appearing in several leading dailies of the region, the project was christened ‘The Rising East’ and was worth Rs. 534 crore. The project was to be implemented in a record time of one month before the end of the financial year 2011-12.
The SCWE claimed, it was funded and supported by several internationally acclaimed non-profit organizations. Newspaper advertisements mentioned “IA of B & MGF, Girls power initiative, AFC-USA, Kids Alive International, Women and Women International, CDC Foundation, Girls Global Education Fund, CHF International and She’s the First” as the sponsors of the programme.
Under the scheme, any entrepreneur who got selected (beneficiaries) were promised a one-time grant ranging from Rs. 25,000 to Rs. 30, 00, 000 depending on the scale of project one planned to undertake. It came with the catch that each applicant must shell out Rs. 2534 as ‘processing or outsourcing fee’ -refundable if not selected.
The scheme was so noble in concept that it even won the endorsement of a Union Minister of State and the North East Khadi & Industries Board (NEKIB). Copies of letters purportedly written by Minister of State for Rural Development, Agatha Sangma and the NEKIB endorsing the programme were presented to applicants who turned up for job the interviews, which eventually reached the people, who applied for the monetary grants through the ‘Field officers’. It simply had everybody, who came to know of the project ‘hook, line and sinker’.
From Nagaland, 26 agents comprising of one ‘project manager’ and an ‘assistant project manager’ alongwith 24 ‘field officers’ were recruited with promise of monthly remuneration for a fixed term of five years. The interviews were conducted in Guwahati. With the recruitment complete, the agents went about their work, going door to door inviting applications from interested individuals.
The agents, who have to now deal with angry applicants, disclosed that they received 1020 applications for grants under the scheme. The amount of money collected as ‘processing fees’ amounting to Rs. 25, 84, 680 were duly transferred to bank accounts maintained by the SCWE, while they awaited news from the self-styled Human Resource and Operations Manager and Chief Managing Director.
In the meantime, the agents were paid their salaries as promised while Singh and Kunal made visits to Dimapur. However, it was to last only for two months as all contacts were lost with the duo after that. All efforts to contact the duo came to naught.
The recruit agents finally lodged a ‘missing complaint’ at GRPS, Dimapur where the duo was last seen boarding a train to Delhi in the early part of May. They later informed the Police Headquarters in Kohima, who alerted Dimapur police.
The absconding duo was eventually arrested from the Guwahati Airport on June 6. How the BIEO entered the picture is unclear. It was said some of the agents’ counterparts in Guwahati lodged a complaint with the Central probe agency. Around 10,000 applications were received and submitted by agents recruited by the SCWE in the north-east, it was added. The conning duo is said to be having more than 40 bank accounts and are alleged to have close contacts with influential people in Delhi. They were brought to Dimapur on June 18 and are currently under police remand.
The duo’s lawyer had already flown in from Delhi to plead for a bailout, it was further learned. “Until and unless the amount deposited (as ‘processing fees’) is refunded, the duo should not be released,” was the demand of the agents recruited by the society. Before the arrest, the recruit agents of the SCWE are said to have made contact with Union Minister of State for RD, Agatha Sangma on her reported endorsement of the project. Sangma is said to have expressed shock and was astonished on the scheme’s deplorable outcome.
