‘No jobs these days…seemed like a good deal’: How over 300 were duped in ‘Prasar Bharati job scam’

“We have heard so much about frauds, but never thought it would happen to us. There is no employment these days and this seemed like a good package. But we were made fools,” said Dilshad Ahmed, a 30-year-old, who is among 300 people allegedly duped through a job recruitment scam.

Earlier last year, Dilshad had learnt of a vacancy at national broadcaster Prasar Bharati through a relative, and was told to pay an amount of Rs 3,000 for an assistant’s job at a salary of around Rs 40,000 per month. But he was told that his application would only be processed once at least 200 people had signed up.

Dilshad and others spread the word and the total number of job aspirants soon rose to over 300. All of them were residents of Delhi and surrounding areas, and were asked to pay varying amounts up to as much as Rs 30,000. Some were even offered a job without a formal interview and a posting of their choice. A "registration fee" of Rs 3,000 was allegedly sought to submit the form, which had a Prasar Bharati logo and basic identification and education details; and a higher amount if one wanted to skip the interview. 

This emerged as a scam to the tune of around Rs 6 lakh when nearly 100 of these applicants gathered outside the Prasar Bharati office in Delhi in May last year as instructed, but were told by the guard that there were no such scheduled job interviews and denied entry. The accused, one Pankaj Gupta, had switched off his phone.

While the complainants alleged that they submitted a complaint to the Delhi Police Economic Offences Wing in May last year, the EOW only lodged an FIR on January 11 this year under Sections 419, 420, 468, 471, and 120B of the IPC. 

The accused

As per the FIR, Pankaj Gupta had allegedly told the victims that his father was a vendor in Prasar Bharati. The four complainants in the case – Sarfaraz Ahmed, Vishal Kumar Pandey, Deepak Kumar, and Dilshad Ahmed – allegedly met Gupta in October 2021 through Sarfaraz. Gupta allegedly told them that they would be assistants to DG and DDG level officers and showed them an alleged email by a senior officer at Prasar Bharati to add heft to his claim.

However, when Gupta was asked why this vacancy was not visible on Prasar Bharati’s website, he allegedly told the victims that the broadcaster recruits on a large scale and often does it via third parties. 

“All Prasar Bharati victims whose names Gupta used to mention were on the website so we never doubted him,” Sarfaraz told Newslaundry.

However, after realising that something was off when they weren’t allowed to enter Prasar Bharati office, some of the victims landed at Gupta’s house to demand answers, but were told he had gone out of town. Sarfaraz, on visiting the Prasar Bharati office again a few days later, found out that recruitments were done only through the website.

In the FIR, the complainants claimed that when they went to confront Gupta, his aunt told them that he has stamps of different government departments and committed fraud before as well. 

Gupta is yet to be arrested.

“He used to meet us at a cafe in Connaught Place and sometimes at his house. He seemed like a religious man, someone who would pray a lot. We never thought this would turn out to be a fraud,” said Dilshad.

Newslaundry reached out to the investigating officer in the case, inspector Bhagwan, to ask about the lack of any arrest and the alleged delay in the FIR. He said that he had just received the case and did not have further information at this stage. 

EOW ACP Sachindar Mohan Sharma and EOW chief Shalini Singh, meanwhile, remained unavailable for comment.

Prasar Bharati officials told Newslaundry that they were unaware of the case and had nothing to do with it.