Three held in ₹25 lakh rice pulling scam

A gang of three persons was busted for duping a Hyderabad man of ₹25 lakh on the pretext of testing ‘rice pulling’ equipment which they claimed was available with the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).

The rice-pulling scam involves fraudsters marketing a vessel made of copper/iridium pulling handful of rice into it owing to its ‘magical properties’.

Pagidimarry Shiva Santhosh Kumar, 43, Gulluru Manjunath Reddy, 38, and Pratap S.R. alias Ravinder Prasad, 44, were arrested by Mahankali police on Wednesday.

The police said ₹25 lakh cash, a copper vessel and seven mobile phones were seized from them. The scammers claim the vessel can similarly attract wealth or earn the owner a fortune when it is resold. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had issued an advisory cautioning citizens not to fall prey to such scams in 2018.

According to the police, the trio got in touch with the complainant Shashikanth through their common friend and lured him promising ₹10 crore through rice pulling.

The copper vessel was sold to the complainant through a company called ‘Appreches and Research’. The accused also convinced the complainant to pay ₹25 lakh to ‘test the quality of the vessel’, citing that the ‘scanner’ used for testing was available with DRDO. However, when complainant enquired about the scanner, the accused further asked for another ₹23 lakh to ‘execute the business’.

Published - October 09, 2024 07:00 pm IST