Hyderabad:The city police on Friday busted a bogus copyright organization and arrested four persons for allegedly duping over 100 job aspirants to the tune of Rs 3 crore.

According to the police, the accused identified as Ch Rathnakar, Aravind Joseph, P. Ramesh Reddy and Ch Satyanarayana established a bogus office at Tirumulgherry and cheated unemployed youths with the false promise of providing jobs in their organization as junior investigators. The accused, under the guise of a copyright protection force, claimed heir establishment was authenticated by the government to act against piracy and copyrights violations.

"In February this year, they set up the VEIC office claiming that they would raid those establishments, which are found selling or manufacturing duplicate products, and inform the copyright authorities. However, the accused did not follow the rules and regulations," police said.

Under the promise of providing jobs in the VEIC, they collected study certificates and bio-data from job seekers and money in the range of Rs 3 lakh to Rs 8 lakh by offering the posts of senior investigator to them.

"After getting the money, the accused prepared fake appointment letters and handed them over to the candidates. To make them believe, they also conducted a one-month training programme, before appointing them as junior investigators," police said.

As per the instructions from the accused, the candidates had even started serving notices to various establishments, accusing them of violation of copyrights, trademark, piracy, etc, police said. "So far, they had appointed 20 to 30 members as junior investigators and set a 'safari' dress code and deputed them to serve the caution notices in the name of VEIC," the police added.

PTI