Kasaragod: In August 2023, Vijayan P K (54), a mason in Kasaragod's Cheemeni village, got a call from an acquaintance saying he knew someone in Kannur who could get his son a job in the Railways.
Vijayan took the advice and contacted Lalchandh Kannoth of Makreri, a village 3km from in Kerala's Kannur district. A year later, on September 13, he approached Cheemeni police complaining that Lalchandh and Sasi K, a former CPM panchayat member of Chokli near Thalassery, duped him of Rs 10.20 lakh by promising a peon's job to his son.
He claimed he gave Rs 3.10 lakh to Lalchandh at Thalassery railway station in August 2023 and Rs 7.10 lakh to Sasi at a lodge in Chennai in February 2024. Vijayan was told that the Railways was fast-tracking recruitment to fill the posts that became vacant after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Soon, it emerged that the mason was a victim of an organised job racket whose alleged kingpin, Geetha Rani (65) alias Geetha Rajagopal of Ayyanthole in Thrissur, has been in this business for nearly 20 years.
Cheemeni police have named her as the fifth accused in the FIR. The other two accused are Sarath S Sivan alias Ajith and his wife Ebhi of Punalur in Kollam district.
On the day Vijayan filed the complaint, Pinarayi police under the Kannur City Commissionerate registered an FIR against the same five people based on a complaint by another job seeker who lost Rs 25 lakh. "This is the second complaint against them in our station. In the first complaint, a job seeker lost Rs 10.20 lakh," said an officer at Pinarayi station.
Thalassery police said the gang duped two job seekers -- AK Sreekumar of Koyod and his brother-in-law Arun from Iritty -- of Rs 36.5 lakh by promising jobs of a clerk in the Railways. The money was paid at Thalassery railway station and in Chennai in November 2023, and they were given forged appointment letters and asked them to report for duty in Bengaluru. They realised they were duped when they reached the office concerned, said police.
Similar cases were registered at Payyannur and Chakkarakkal police stations, too. In Kannur district, police have registered 15 cases against the racket members. Four complaints have come up in Kozhikode, too.
Thalassery Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Shahansha KS said Geetha Rani was first arrested in 2007, and several times after that in similar cheating cases. In the latest run, which started in 2023, she and her network of agents swindled more than Rs 1 crore in Kannur city police limits alone, said the IPS officer. Across Kannur, Kasaragod and Kozhikode districts, the racket has swindled double that amount. "It is unfortunate that most of their victims are graduates," said Shahansha.
Thalassery police arrested Geetha Rani from Thiruvananthapuram and Sarath Sivan alias Ajith from Punalur on September 12. Sasi, the former panchayat member, was arrested much before that.
Job rate cards, MLA quota, offer letters
Shahansha said the gang approached their victims with a recruitment rate card which has the name and photographs of the "authorised agent", available jobs in Groups C and D, and the corresponding rates for each position.
They charged Rs 10.20 lakh for jobs such as helper, trackman, assistant pointsman, and peon in Group D; and up to Rs 35 lakh for non-technical posts such as clerk, train manager, and ticket collector in Group C.
The officer said the racket was well-informed about job openings in the Railways. They used letterheads and seals identical to those of the respective Railway departments for which they offered jobs or issued fake appointment letters.
They reportedly told their victims that they were offering jobs from the quotas of MLAs and MPs in Tamil Nadu. The rate cards, too, taking on an official format with bureaucratic language and seals, might look convincing, but people need to know that government jobs aren’t for sale and there are no MP and MLA quotas in the Railways, said Shahansha. The officer suspects that someone on the inside is either leading the racket or at least guiding them, given the thoroughness of the fraud.
Geetha Rani, an old master
Police said there were at least seven cases against Geetha Rani. She was arrested in 2007 for playing a member of the Kerala Public Service Commission (PSC). According to her bail petition then, Thiruvananthapuram city police had accused her of taking Rs 80,000 from a job-seeker for a government job. When the job-seeker phoned her, she was inside the PSC office at Pattom in Thiruvananthapuram. She came out of the PSC office and handed him the appointment order. He realised he was duped when he went to the office concerned to join duty. The same year, she allegedly took Rs 16,500 from another person in Thiruvananthapuram promising him a job in Zambia.
Ten years later, in June 2017, Thiruvananthapuram rural police arrested her for allegedly duping 17 people of Rs 29 lakh by promising jobs in the Indian Army. Then she even conducted farcical interviews for the Army recruits in Bengaluru, said police. She was running a consultancy at Patturaikkal in Thrissur. Police said the consultancy was a perfect cover to defraud job-seekers. Around that time, her husband Rajagopal of Alappuzha was also arrested for offering a job for cash at the school where he worked. She was accused of collecting Rs 2 lakh from the job-seeker against a cheque issued in Rajagopal's name.
Another seven years down the line, she is still merrily picking on job-seekers. This time in north Kerala.
