Mumbai: A man has been booked for allegedly renting laptops in the name of setting up a company office and later selling them off to another supplier.
The scam came to light when the complainant received pictures of the same laptops from another supplier a month later.
According to the Andheri police, the complainant, Harbhajansingh Sethi, supplies laptops on rent to various businesses.
Sethi told the police that he was introduced to the accused, Manoj Gond, in June last year. Gond had claimed that he was running an information technology company out of a commercial space in Four Bungalows and needed a large quantity of laptops.
“After discussions, Sethi and Gond reached an agreement in December, 2022. Gond rented 85 basic laptops on a monthly payment of ₹2,00,600. The agreement was signed for a period of five months. Due to the large number of laptops needed, Sethi had to buy them on a priority basis so that he could provide them to Gond. He bought them from another supplier for ₹12.75 lakh and Gond paid him an initial amount of ₹1 lakh immediately,” a police officer said.
Gond had promised to pay the remaining amount of the first month’s rent by January 2, 2023. When the payment was not received, Sethi contacted Gond’s employees who had collected the laptops from him. However, they said that they had quit their jobs because they were not being paid salaries.
Sethi then visited Gond’s office only to find it to be locked. When he managed to get Gond on the phone, the latter told him that he was caught up with a medical emergency.
“On January 12, I received a WhatsApp message along with pictures of a batch of laptops for sale from another supplier. I was shocked to see that they were the same laptops that I had provided to Gond. I could identify our machines as we paste unique stickers on them before handing them over to our clients. I sent my employees to the supplier who had sent the message and they confirmed that Gond had sold all 85 laptops to them,” Sethi told the police.
Sethi then renewed his efforts to contact Gond but in vain. Then he approached the police on Saturday. The police have booked Gond for cheating and criminal breach of trust under the relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and launched a manhunt for him, an officer said.