New Delhi, May 18 (PTI) Three men were arrested for allegedly defrauding more than 1,000 people across India of over Rs 17 lakh issuing forged certificates and IDs related to the Common Service Centers, police said on Thursday.

Monu Sharma, 24, Kuldeep Singh, 27, and Chitresh Goyal, 26, were arrested for duping rural people with a fake website and taking money from them for government services, they said.

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Common Service Centers or CSC is a government initiative to deliver e-services to rural and remote locations where availability of computers and internet is sparse or negligible.

These centres are the access points for delivery of various Government-to-Citizen (G2C) e-services in healthcare, finance, education, agriculture and other domains.

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According to Deputy Commissioner of Police (Cyber Cell) Prashant Gautam, the matter came to light after a representative of CSC e-Governance Services India Limited lodged a complaint with cyber cell alleging that a clone version of its website was defrauding people in its name.

The frauds mimicked the official website https://www.cscentrepreneur.in/ and launched a clone website http://csccentrapreneru.com/ to gull the unsuspecting users, he said.

The people behind the website offered to facilitate the registration and allotment of CSC ID without any examination against a certain sum, the complainant said.

In addition, the cybercrooks also offered approval of CSC Id, CSC centres, and certificates against money, the officer said.

"During investigation, it was found that the fake website http://csccentrapreneru.com/ was created with a name 'Indian Guru Sharma' by accused Chitresh and the mobile number registered with the site was found to be in the name of accused Monu Sharma," the DCP said.

Two more mobile numbers used in crime were found to be registered in the name of Chitresh Goyal, police said.

"A raid was conducted in Delhi and Rajasthan and accused Monu along with his associate Kuldeep Singh was apprehended. Later, accused Chitresh was also arrested from Jaipur, Rajasthan," he said.

CSC e-Governance Services India Ltd is a special purpose vehicle which provides a centralised collaborative framework for the delivery of various G2C and B2C services to citizens through CSCs.

(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)