New Delhi, Mar 28 (PTI) Two men were arrested for allegedly duping people on the pretext of getting them into the Patanjali Yog Gram in Uttarkhand's Haridwar for treatment, police said on Monday.

The accused have been identified as Gautam Kumar (22) and Bittu Kumar (21), both residents of Bihar, they said.

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Police said that investigation in the case was started following a complaint from Anil Mutreja.

Mutreja claimed that after going through a website, he contacted a person on phone for the treatment of his daughter at the Patanjali Yog Gram in Haridwar.

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The person sent Mutreja several photographs of the Patanjali centre as well as packages for stay there and treatment, police said.

Believing the person, Mutreja transferred Rs 1.2 lakh, a senior police officer said.

During investigation, it was learnt that the accused persons created the website with the help of an Israel-based company, the officer said.

Details were sought from the company and they revealed that the website 'yoggramofficial.net' was registered with the email-id 'yoggramofficial@gmail.com', the officer said.

The email-id was accessed by Gautam and his location was traced to Vasundhara in Uttar Pradesh's Ghaziabad, police said.

On March 12, Gautam and Bittu were apprehended from there, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Rohini) Pranav Tayal said.

The accused told police that about two years ago, they got the idea of running cheating rackets from a video on YouTube.

They used to cheat people also on the pretext of providing loans, police said, adding they earlier targeted poor and vulnerable people.

But later, to get more money, they launched the website using the name of Patanjali and started cheating people on the pretext of getting them treatment at the Patanjali Yog Gram in Haridwar, police said.

They were running many fake websites and used to send people photographs of cottages at the centre and also of Yoga guru Ramdev. They had even prepared fake catalogues to send on WhatsApp, police said.

Once they convinced the victim, they used to ask him or her to deposit money in advance. In order to extract maximum amount, they used to give good discount options to the victims, they said.

Investigation of the case is in progress and other members of the syndicate are being traced, police said, adding that more than Rs 9 lakh in different bank accounts has been freezed.

After contacting Patanjali Yogpeeth, it was found that 157 victims have approached the Yogpeeth with similar grievences. In order to ascertain the involvement of the accused persons in these cases, the SIM cards used by them are being analysed, police said.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)