Biting gigolo bait

Greed is so destructive that it destroys everything.  A number of people are losing their hard-earned money due to their greed to earn easy buck. Sizable number of young people appears to have bitten the bait to become gigolos and ‘call boys’ to earn easy money and lost their savings in the process in a Hyderabad-based racket. The ad invites the prospective young people to become members with the promise to earn Rs 50,000 every month by being escort to rich and aged women. The bait is hard to resist-earn money along with pleasure. The young men are asked to deposit Rs 10,000 in a bank account and wait for the call from the rich girl to accompany them. The call never comes and by the time they learnt that they are cheated, they are poorer by several thousands of rupees. They cannot approach the police since they know it is an illegal activity. Several hundreds if not thousands of people have lost their precious earnings in this racket. This is only a single instance. There are several such types of rackets in the classifieds going on every day. One ad offers employment and asks the applicant to deposit Rs 1500 in a bank account and if deposited that is the last of it. The poor people who pay the amount in the hope of securing a job are deprived of the small amount which is big enough for them. They are not in a position to approach the police and no police will swing into action to chase the culprits for that petty amount. Another ad seeks deposits without RBI permission promising to repay everyday certain amount for one hundred days. For instance, if Rs 1 lakh is deposited, the depositor is promised to repay Rs 1250 every day for 100 days. No need to say it is lost. Not only that the losers are asked to enroll their friends and relatives with the promise of handsome commission. Then apart from losing money, they lose relations with their friends and relatives, which is all the more dangerous. The police role in all these activities is questionable. They seldom receive complaints. Even if anyone approaches, the police shoo them away holding the victims’ greed responsible for the loss.

The primary duty of the police is prevention and detection of crime. There is neither prevention nor detection by the police in spite of the existence of a separate wing - Economic Offences Wing (EOW) in the Crime Investigation Department. The EOW is supposed to track the white collar offences. Pathetically, they do not act even if there are written complaints. The Tamil Nadu police had separated the Economic Offences Wing from the CBCID under the leadership of an IG. Andhra Pradesh police need to take a cue from the Tamil Nadu police in this respect. Some years back, there was this proposal to separate the Economic Offences Wing from CID and keep it as an independent identity. For reasons best known to the powers-that-be, the proposal was shelved. As long as there is no pro-active role on the part of the police, such white collar offences continue to thrive cheating the gullible with impunity. It is high time the Economic Offences Wing took initiative to prevent white collar offences.