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Politicians under scanner

By Rituraj Borthakur

GUWAHATI, Aug 20 - Investigation into the call centre racket case unearthed in Guwahati is unfolding a political link, leading to some prominent elected representatives.

One of the busted call centres located at Basistha was being run by the name RK Group of Enterprise. The company has a sister concern, a business technology consulting firm, which is reportedly owned by an elected public representative, police sources told The Assam Tribune.

Some employees of the call centre at Basistha had reportedly worked with the politician-owned firm earlier. The firm under question is an IT solution company founded in 1999. Headquartered in a neighbouring state, the firm has a corporate office in Guwahati.

The police are probing if the politician in question had any role in the cyber crime racket linked to Sagar Thakkar alias Shaggy, the alleged mastermind of a Rs 1,900-crore call centre scam arrested by Maharashtra police earlier this month.

Sources also said that leads have pointed to other political links in Assam as well.

City Police Commissioner Hiren Nath said the police have decided to conduct random checks to verify credentials of call centres operating in Assam. �People are also requested to inform us if there are any fraud call centres,� he said.

Meanwhile, four of the eight persons arrested so far were today produced in a court which remanded them to further eight days of police custody. The four accused are the Basistha call centre �Admin� Rana Prasad Kalita, Ketan Kaushal (Haryana), Mavada Punit (Gujarat) and Ram Kumar Rai (Bihar).

Police are on the lookout for one Rajesh Khan of Ahmedabad who had opened the second call centre at a complex along the national highway at Bhetapara. A team of Assam Police yesterday left for Gujarat for the investigation.

Sagar Thakkar, the alleged mastermind of the Internal Revenue Service call centre scam, in which thousands of Americans were defrauded to the tune of $300 million, was operating the extortion racket since 2013. They had targeted at least 15,000 US-based tax payers, who were allegedly conned by Indian tele-callers who impersonated as Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Immigration and other federal officials and demanded payments for non-existent debts.

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