NEW DELHI: In a country where the Panama Papers and fugitive billionaires have failed to cause ripples, a fraudulent job scheme has caught the nation’s attention.

Reports on Monday spoke of a bizarre railway job scam that has been detected by Delhi Police wherein 28 unemployed youth have been duped of over 2.5 crore. According to a report by PTI news agency, 28 job seekers from Tamil Nadu became the victims of this railway job scam. Most of the victims are graduates with backgrounds in engineering and technical education. The scam occurred this year between June and July at the New Delhi Railway station.

The fraudsters trapped the victims saying they will get a job at the railways if they submit a ‘certain amount’ and finish a one-month training at Delhi’s train station. The 28 people from Tamil Nadu were deployed at different platforms of the New Delhi Railway Station every day for eight hours for a month to count the arrival and departure of trains and their coaches.

They had been told that this was part of their training for positions of travel ticket examiner (TTE), traffic assistant, and clerks. Each victim paid amounts ranging between 2 lakh and 24 lakh to get jobs in the Railways, according to a complaint filed with the Delhi Police’s Economic Offences Wing (EOW).

The scam came to light after 78-year-old M Subbusamy, an ex-serviceman, complained to the Delhi police. Subbusamy had put the victims in touch with the alleged fraudsters, but he has claimed that he was unaware that the entire thing was a scam and that he too had fallen for their trap. For the one-month training which took place between June and July, the victims were duped of 2.67 crore by a group of fraudsters.”

Each candidate paid money ranging from 2 lakh to 24 lakh to Subbusamy who further paid these to a person named Vikas Rana. Rana posed as a deputy director in the Northern Railway office in Delhi,” 25-year-old Snethil Kumar, a victim from Madurai, told The Mint.”

Though the training amount varied for various positions such as travel ticket examiners, traffic assistants, or clerks, everyone underwent the same training, i.e, counting trains at stations,” he added. However, Subbusamy told the PTI news agency that he was not aware that it was a scam. He said since his retirement, he has been helping unemployed youths in his locality to find “a suitable job without any monetary interest”.

In the FIR, he alleged that he met a person named Sivaraman, a resident of Coimbatore, in one of the MP quarters in Delhi. Sivaraman claimed to be very closely associated with MPs and ministers and offered to facilitate employment in the railways for the unemployed in lieu of monetary gains. He further alleged that Sivaraman asked him to come to Delhi along with job seekers. “Initially, I came with three job seekers and when the news of their job training spread in their villages in and around Madurai, 25 more candidates joined in,” Subbusamy said.

The job seekers also gave medical examinations at the Railway Central Hospital, Connaught Place. They were also called for document verification at the office of the Junior Engineer, Northern Railway, Shankar Market, New Delhi before the final selection.

Published in Dawn, December 27th, 2022