Team Herald
PONDA: The multiple cash-for-jobs scams erupting across Goa have blown the lid off a chain of networks, where the scam kingpins and queen-pins recruited operatives, who then reached out to gullible individuals ready to cough up lakhs for lucrative government jobs.
If you enjoyed reading this article, you can help support our journalism by adding OHeraldo as a preferred source.
But when the jobs didn’t materialise and the scam victims started asking for their money back, the same operatives turned on their masters and mistresses and went to the police with their complaints. In some cases, these operatives were victims of the scams as well, as they had also paid money for a dream government job.
The lines between perpetrator and victim are often getting blurred as the investigation into the cash-for-jobs scams progresses. According to the latest estimates, hundreds of job aspirants paid amounts totalling nearly Rs 8 crore. And the figures are going up every day.
The highest number of complaints is currently stacking up against two queen-pins – Pooja Naik of Old Goa and Deepashree Sawant e Gawas from Tivrem, Orgao. Both these intrepid – and unscrupulous – homemakers have been accused of collecting tens of lakhs mostly in cash using multiple intermediaries.
Deepashree allegedly recruited two operatives – government employee Sandeep Parab, a junior engineer in Water Resources Department (WRD) office at Ponda, and Indian Reserve Battalion (IRB) constable Sagar Naik. Both were government servants, making it easy for them to reach out to job aspirants.
According to an employee at the Ponda WRD office, Parab would assure people while collecting money from them that he would sell his bungalow and pay back their dues if the jobs didn’t materialise. It has been alleged that Parab would take his wife to convince the people on some occasions. He reportedly collected nearly Rs 4 crore from as many as 44 people, which included retired government employees. Many have approached the Mardol Police to recover their investments.
Apart from the complaint Parab lodged against Deepashree at the Mardol Police station on Thursday, he had also filed a complaint against her at the Economic Offence Cell (EOC), Panjim. It has also emerged that while Parab claimed that he was a retired employee, he is actually on three months’ sick leave since October.
Sagar Naik, Deepashree’s other operative, spilled the beans on her after being arrested, leading to Deepashree being nabbed.
Pooja Naik, the other queen-pin, pretended to be a State Secrertariat employee and recruited Shridhar Satarkar, a government peon, and Ajit Satarkar, a driver by profession, to reach out to hundreds of people and collect money. When the jobs did not materialise, Sridhar started facing the heat from those who had paid up. Unable to handle the hounding, Sridhar allegedly killed himself. His body was found hanging from a tree in a jungle in Mardol. However, not everyone will take such a drastic step. As the accomplices face the heat, more of them may reveal how the scam masterminds pulled off one of Goa’s biggest frauds in decades.
