Shahjahanpur, Jan 8 (PTI) A dismissed government accountant was arrested on Monday for allegedly cheating people and floating a fake tender by posing as an officer of the Gas Authority of India Limited (GAIL) in Uttar Pradesh's Shahjahanpur district, police said.

Ramnaresh Shukla, a resident of Shahabad town in Uttar Pradesh's Hardoi district, had opened an office in Nigohi here and employed 18 people to run his operations, Superintendent of Police (SP) Ashok Kumar Meena said.

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He was dismissed from his post of lekhpal in 2012 over charges of fraudulency in land registration, Meena said.

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Posing as an officer of central public sector undertaking (PSU) GAIL, he floated the fake tender from his office for laying of cooking gas pipelines, the SP said.

Besides this, it was also found that he had taken lakhs of rupees from the people working at his office in lieu of getting them jobs at GAIL, Meena said and added that they were also made to conducted surveys for laying of pipelines.

The matter came to light after some contractors reported to the Nigohi police station about a tender worth Rs 3,200 crore floated by Shukla and being asked to deposit a registration fee of Rs 3 lakh and a deposit of Rs 9 crore, the SP said.

They had gone to Shukla's office for the tender and got suspicious of his activities, Meena said.

When questioned, Shukla confessed to his crimes and also said that he was in jail in Hardoi district after being dismissed in the Rs 6-crore fraud case, the SP said. PTI COR SAB

(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)