CA ARRESTED FOR FRAUD

A leading telecom company was cheated of `95 lakhs allegedly by a chartered accountant and his three associates, who have been arrested by the south Delhi police.
The accused have been identified as Manoj Pahwa, 34, a resident of Rohini and a chartered accountant, Varun Mittal, 23, a resident of Meerut, UP, and an aeronautical engineer, Rahul Sharma, 33, a native of Gurgaon and executive accountant in Unitech Wireless and Nitin Sharma, 24, a resident of Ghaziabad.
The police said the four accused were involved in cheating Uninor, a joint venture of Telenor and Unitech, of `95 lakhs and the cops have recovered `6.48 lakhs and a one kilogram gold biscuit along with some gold ornaments from the accused.
The police said Vishal Jain, a senior manager at Unitech Wireless had made a complaint at the Saket police station in September last year that `95 lakhs were fraudulently debited from their three accounts with HDFC Bank and 13 cheques were found stolen from their Saket office.
The investigations revealed that the money had been credited to 13 different accounts.
“All the missing cheques were stolen by Rahul from his company office in Saket at the behest of his acquaintance Varun. The money was withdrawn using forged signatures, which were prepared by Amrita Kumari Sharma, who is absconding. The signed cheques were then given by Varun to his associates for encashing for which he gave them a percentage of the total amount in return,” DCP (south) H.G.S. Dhaliwal, said.
The accused have been sent to police custody for four days. The police said Pahwa deposited two forged cheques in the accounts of his client companies, SM Enterprises and Globe Marketing to credit `20 lakhs.
Pahwa, a management graduate, completed his CA in 2001. His wife is principal of a reputed school in Delhi. The police said Varun was the mastermind of the fraud.