Kanpur: The Kanpur Dehat Police have busted a fraud racket that allegedly duped e-commerce giant Amazon of nearly Rs 10 lakh by exploiting its delivery system. Two men, including an Amazon delivery executive who allegedly secured the job using a fake identity, were arrested in a joint operation by the Bhognipur police, the Special Operations Group (SOG) and the surveillance team.The accused were identified as Rohit Thakur alias Defaulter and his associate Manjeet Gupta alias Genius. Police recovered Rs 8 lakh in cash, a car allegedly used in the crime, a motorcycle, three Android mobile phones and six SIM cards from their possession.The case was registered on the complaint of Mahendra Kumar, a resident of Rura. During the investigation, police found that the accused had been exploiting Amazon’s delivery system for the past one-and-a-half months, allegedly causing losses worth lakhs of rupees to the company.According to police, Rohit secured a job as a delivery executive at Amazon’s delivery centre in Pukhrayan using a fake identity card. After being assigned the Kalpi delivery route, he allegedly shared details of high-value consignments with Manjeet.Police said Manjeet then placed orders for Apple Watches, Apple AirPods and other expensive electronic items using fake names and addresses on the same delivery route through both cash-on-delivery (COD) and prepaid modes. Once the parcels reached the delivery centre, Rohit allegedly passed the shipment details to Manjeet, who cancelled the orders, resulting in refunds of prepaid payments by the company.The accused allegedly opened the parcels using a heat gun without damaging the packaging, removed the original products, replaced them with dummy items, resealed the packages and returned them to the Amazon office. As the packets appeared intact, the tampering initially went unnoticed, police said.Kanpur Dehat Superintendent of Police Shraddha Narendra Pandey said the accused committed fraud involving expensive products worth around Rs 10 lakh between June 1 and June 11. The stolen goods were allegedly sold to traders in Kanpur and Delhi at prices below the market rate.Police recovered Rs 8 lakh in cash and said information had been received that around Rs 2 lakh was lying in the accused’s bank accounts, which were being processed for freezing.The Bhognipur police have booked both accused under Sections 318(4) and 317(2) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS). Police said further investigation is underway to ascertain whether any other individuals or a larger network were involved in the racket.
