Thane, Jan 22 (PTI) Five persons have been booked for allegedly cheating a Thane doctor's husband of Rs 3 crore with the promise of helping him secure a top government post, an official said on Wednesday.

The complainant, whose wife runs a hospital in Kalyan in Thane district, told the police that he shelled out the money in 2020 but the work was never done.

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The accused persons had promised to make the 56-year-old complainant the chairman of the “Maharashtra office of the MSME (Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises)”, said the official from Mumbra police station.

According to the complainant, he was also given several fabricated documents that the accused passed off as being released by the central and Maharashtra governments.

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After the complainant began following up, the accused allegedly threatened him with “ED (Enforcement Directorate) and I-T (Income Tax) probes” and defamed him, his wife and her hospital through a news channel, the official said.

Collectively, the accused extracted Rs 3 crore from the doctor's husband. Some of them claimed to be “influential people” in the north.

(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)