Crime Patrol – Friday- Saturday @ 11pm
Friday, October 18
TITLE- THE CON TEAM (Part I)
‘The Con Team’ entails the story of two confident people who target any and every person and dupe them out of huge amounts of money. Mohan Kumar, the CEO of sethupathy Textiles living in Chennai, receives a phone call from a Diana Susan, the secretary to Shri Narayan Rao IAS, Director, Project Development, Karnataka, stating that Mr. Rao wanted to have a word with him. Mr. Rao tells Mohan that he has heard a great deal about sethupathy Textiles especially in the market of cadre clothings in Tamil Nadu. He says Mohan that he is heading the Project Development department, and under his department uniforms had to be made for medical, transport, etc. It was a huge contract of about 40 crores, and so Mr. Rao wanted to know if Mohan was interested in it. Seeing Mohan’s enthusiasm, he tells the latter to get the detailed brief from his secretary Diana. Diana fills him up with all the details regarding the money deposit and bank details. The bank account where the money had to be deposited was a personal account in the name of Shri Narayan Rao, in National People’s Bank. She tells him that he had four months to fill in the bank deposit. And once it had been done, she would mail him the application form. Mohan is elated to bag the contract. Over the period of next four months, he makes a total deposit of 92 lakhs in smaller installments and informs Diana about each deposit. However, after the last deposit of 11 lakhs, he fails to get in touch with Diana. Rajeshwar, the General Manager of Sethupahty Textiles, who knew about the deal and deposits, then checks on the Karnataka Government website and finds out that there was no Project Development Department. He informs Mohan of the same. Mohan is shocked. He even travels to Bengaluru, along with Rajeshwar but the Principal Secretary of state informs him that they do not have any IAS officer called Narayan Rao, in the entire state of Karnataka. It is then that Mohan contacts ACP Rangarajan of Crime Branch who in turn puts the Tamil Nadu Crime Branch on the case. PI Mahesh Karthik, PSI M. Selvamurthi and ASI H. Kumaraswamy are assigned the case. The initial findings reveal that the address and the phone number given are fake. The bank Manager of National People’s Bank tells them that the bank deposits had been withdrawn only a few days after deposition, each time. However, a photograph of Narayan Rao is obtained from his account papers. Also, by going through Diana’s call records, the police get a name Shankar Raman, who appears to be Narayan’ s alias. They also find out that there is a Malayalam actress by the name of Diana Susan, who lives in Kochi. PI and PSI travel to Kochi and reach Diana’s place. She is the same girl who was working with Narayan Rao. The police question her about Narayan Rao and Shankar Raman. However, she fakes innocence and tells them that since she is a successful actress, someone might be using her name for personal gains. The police believe her. From the Kochi crime branch, the police gets to know that Shankar Raman, has been involved in a fraud case involving 25 lakhs, in April 2012. The complainant was Baby Joseph, a famous garment chain storeowner in Kerala. The police reach his house in Kochi. Baby Joseph’s identifies Shankar Raman’s photo. Shankar Raman claimed to be running an event company and promised to arrange for superstars to grace the opening of Baby Joseph’s garment showrooms. In August 2011, he had arranged for a southern superstar Badri Reddy to inaugurate his showroom. Baby had paid him 15 lakhs for the deed. After that in April 2012, Shankar had asked for a price of 25 lakhs, to get a bollywood starlet Sabrina Rauf to inaugurate Baby Joseph’s showroom in Ernakulam. However, Shankar had vanished after taking the money. The police ask Baby, if he knew Diana Susan, to which he replies in the negative. The Chennai Crime Branch receives information about 12 fraud cases against Shankar Raman, from the Bangalore Crime Branch. However, Shankar was out on bail in all the cases. PI Ramesh Sheshadri from the Ambattur police station gives them information about a fraud case of 25 crores involving Narayan Rao. The case was registered by the General Manager of Dolby and Scold Bank. Hariharan, a vending machine supplier was contacted by Diana Susan, who introduced herself to be the secretary to Mr. Narayan Rao, Project Development Director, Karnataka. Mr. Rao was offering him a project worth 110 crores for supplying vending machines in different Government offices. But for that Hariharan was required to make a deposit of 25 crores. It was the same old technique. However, Hariharan fails to get a bank loan of 25 crores. The Branch Manager of Dolby and Scold Bank, Suresh Rajan tells him that he does not have the authority to sanction such a huge amount. When Hariharan informs Mr. Rao about the same, the latter volunteers to speak to the Branch Manager, himself. He coerces Suresh into sanctioning the loan, by promising him 2 percent of the amount. Suresh agrees and even manages to get in the Cluster Manager Archana into the scheme, by promising her some commission. During interrogation, Hariharan, Archana, and Suresh tell the police that in March 2013, Archana checked and found out that no Project Development division existed in the Karnataka Government. Plus there was no IAS officer named Narayan Rao in the entire state. The General Manager of Dolby and Scold Bank, Mr. Shanmugham was furious to know about the deal, and pressed charges against his employees, Hariharan and Narayan Rao. But Narayan Rao is again untraceable and so is his secretary, Diana. After going through the details of the Dolby and Scold Bank case, the crime branch is amazed at their scope of crime and realize that the con team of Shankar and Diana will go on with their spree of frauds if kept unchecked. The list of frauds committed by ‘The Con Team’ was never ending. First 25 lakhs, then 92 lakhs and now there was a fraud of 25 crores. They were getting bolder day by day. There was no clue about Shankar Raman alias Narayan Rao…Who was Diana Susan?? Was she just an actress or a con artist??
Crime Patrol
Friday- Saturday @ 11pm
Saturday, October 19
TITLE- THE CON TEAM (Part II)
This episode brings forth the last and concluding part of ‘The Con Team’. After coming to know about the 25 crore heist pulled off by Narayan Rao and his partner in crime Diana Susan, the Tamil Nadu crime branch decide to tighten their hold on the duo. After coming to know that the Malyalam actress Diana Susan is no superstar but a small time actress, they decide to investigate deeper into her background as well. Upon reaching Shankar Raman’s parents house, the police gets to know that Shankar had last visited his parents house a year back, and that too for a few hours only. They are heart-broken over the fact that Shankar who had been good in his studies and wanted to pursue MBA, had gotten himself involved in such activities. They tell the police that they are totally clueless about Shankar’s current whereabouts and they do not know about any Diana Susan also. On reaching Diana’s place in Kochi, the police get to know from a neighbor that she was a tenant there and had vacated her place a week back. Since Diana was an actress, the police decides to make enquiries from the various production houses where she had previously worked. One such production controller, Sunil, tells the police that Diana had just worked in one of their films and in that too she had a very minor role. But Sunil does tell them that Diana had bagged a role in a hindi film nd was last heard of shooting somewhere in Kanyakumari. He also tells them that she never had any personal secretary and all of her assignments were handled by her boyfriend, a guy named Shiva Raman. He recognizes Narayan Rao’s alias Shankar Raman’s photograph to be that of Shiva Raman’s. The PI and PSI travel to Mumbai to meet the production house of the hindi film. While on their way to the production house, the ASI informs them that, only a day before, Shankar Raman had applied for an anticipatory bail in the Mumbai High Court, against the case that the Chennai crime branch had registered against him. However his bail plea had been rejected in the court. At the Mumbai crime branch, the PI and PSI get to know that Shankar Raman had fled the scene post his appearance at the court. The police decide to reach him through Diana. They reach the office of the production controller of hindi film but he tells them that Diana has already completed her schedule of shoot with them. However, the police are able to get her Mumbai address from there. Upon reaching her address at Ville Parle, they get know that she had vacated the house, a month back. From the society office the police get the information that Diana always had two body guards following her everywhere. Through the police verification form, the police get their names and numbers and also the name of their agency. At the security agency office, they are told that, a month back, Rajesh Mhatre and Govind Singh, Diana’s two bodyguards had quit the agency. Both Rajesh’s and Govind’s numbers, obtained from the agency are disconnected. However, the number of Harish, cousin brother of Govind, as mentioned in the security agency form was still on. The police put that number on tracking. Soon the police get to know that Harish has been in constant contact with a number in Delhi for the past one month, which has been registered in the name Shiva Raman. They find out the address to be one in Chattarpur Farms, New Delhi. The Delhi crime branch sends in their guy Ashwin, to get information about the residents in the bungalow. The bungalow has several costly cars parked outside on the porch. One of them even had a government sticker on it. However, Ashwin tells them that he waited for four hours but no one went in or came out of the bungalow. Through the brokers it was confirmed that Diana suzan and narayan rao had taken the bungalow on rent. The Chennai Crime Branch is briefed about the developments. At the bungalow, Ashwin while keeping a watch at the bungalow, finds no one coming out of the house and is perturbed. PI Karthik, from the Tamil Nadu crime branch gives strict instructions that no raid was to be conducted in the bungalow until it is ascertained that Shankar and Diana are really inside the house. The next day, as Ashwin is watching, the door of the bungalow opens and Diana comes out with her bodyguard Rajesh and another man with a coat who looked similar to Shankar Raman. He alerts the police and in the lane outside bungalow, Diana’s car is forced to a halt by the police officials. Diana is apprehended along with her two bodyguards but Shankar Raman is found to be missing. Back in bungalow, the servant Lalu tells them that his master left some ten minutes back. It is revealed that Diana had called him up after her arrest. In the Chennai interrogation room, Diana tells the police that she had come down to Mumbai to try her hand in acting. She had met Shankar Raman at a party where he had introduced himself to be a PR of hindi films. Till the time Diana came to about Shankar’s truth, Shankar lured her into becoming his partner in his ‘own’ money making business. She confesses to the fact that she had informed Shankar about her arrest, but she did not have any idea as to his current whereabouts. All the bank accounts of Shankar Raman are frozen. At the Delhi crime branch, the PSI informs the PI that a day before, Shankar Raman had booked a flight to Kolkata. An informer Pablo tracks down a travel agency in Kolkata, from where Shankar Raman had got papers done for his escape to Nepal. However, Shankar is untraceable in Nepal as well. The Nepal police is issued a notice about Shankar Raman. The Kolkata crime branch asks Pablo to keep an eye on the travel agent Pradeep. On the 11th July, 2013, Pradeep calls and tells Pablo that Shankar had called him the night before and asked him to get his papers done for Bangladesh. Shankar comes in to collect his papers and is caught by the Kolkata crime branch. He is handed over to the Chennai crime branch. At the interrogation, Shankar confesses to all his frauds. He also tells the police that though the cars he had, might have been stolen from someone, but he had paid for all the cars. He also shows absolutely no remorse over his deeds. He felt that fraud and treachery was committed by people at all levels. The saddest part of the entire crime was that apart from Baby Joseph, none of the victims had ever met Shankar Raman. So they were unable in helping to identify him. Though Diana Susan is out on bail, she has to report to the police station on daily basis. Shankar Raman has been booked under various IPC sections and the Gonda Act and hence he cannot be granted bail for a period of one year.
