03 December,2015 07:02 AM IST | | Sagar Rajput
Agent in sting video seen demanding Rs 9 lakh from 'recruit' who'll pose as child of deceased BMC employee; Crime Branch nabs two BMC staffers, their agents following mid-day exposé
It was nearly a month ago that a massive recruitment scam at the BMC came to light, with hundreds of people posing as the children of dead civic employees to score a job as a sweeper (Class IV post).
Also read: BMC job scam - Cops file fresh FIR after victims deprived of jobs come forward
A grab from the video. Despite being under the scanner of cops, 32-year-old Kunal Jogadia was moving around freely offering jobs for money
Shockingly, even as the Crime Branch was investigating the case, the culprits brazenly continued the fraud, never expecting to get caught. Little did they know that very soon, they would get caught - first on camera, then by the police.
Social activists from the Consumer Social Work Sanstha, Ashok Maskar, Shivprasad Tiwari and Hirabhai Sosa visited the mid-day office yesterday to discuss their efforts to expose the job scam at the BMC. Pic/Atul Kamble
The past week has seen two major breakthroughs in the case; not only did the Crime Branch arrest four people allegedly involved in the scam, but social activists from the Consumer Social Work Sanstha also conducted a sting operation that proved that the conmen were still continuing the scam.
An officer from Crime Branch Unit 3 said, "The accused revealed that they have been committing the crime since five years and never feared that they would be caught. They said they would demand money from clients in the range of Rs 5-10 lakh for a job."
In the sting operation, a decoy client approached one Kunal Jogadia (32), an agent who made deals with job applicants and arranged for their bogus documentation. The client met Jogadia near Mahalaxmi Racecourse to strike a deal for a job at the BMC, capturing the conversation on a hidden camera.
In the clip, Jogadia tells the client he can guarantee a sweeper's job if he is paid Rs 8.5 to 9 lakh. Even more shocking is his suggestion that once the client gets the job, he can simply pay his supervisor Rs 4,500 each month so that he doesn't even have to turn up for work. mid-day has access to the sting operation video and has culled a few excerpts (see âStriking a deal').
Also read: BMC job scam - Using the dead to run a recruitment racket
Jogadia told the fake client that he could not offer a job in the D-ward due to some issues, no doubt referring to the police probe going on there. He also warned the applicant not to tell anybody about the deal, as he feared being exposed by a police informer.
His fears came true, as on Tuesday night, just a week after the sting operation, he was arrested along with three others - another agent, Sunny Vinod Vinjuda (31) and two BMC employees, clerk Dilip Choukekar (47) and peon Anil Kanji Baliya (27).
"Chaukekar and Baliya would get the information about vacant posts that nobody had applied for and they would keep those files aside. The files would then be handed over to the agents and depending on the name of the ex-employee, the identity of the recruits would be changed. The agents would give them around Rs 2 lakh for each file," said a Crime Branch officer.
