Jaipur: A 43-year-old accused, on the run for six years after allegedly duping nearly 200 people of Rs 12.69 crore, was arrested by Dholpur police from Delhi, ending a months-long, multi-city hunt.Superintendent of police Vikas Sangwan identified the accused as Amit Gautam, a resident of Dholpur, who carried a combined reward of Rs 43,000 and was wanted in around 20 cases across Dholpur, Jaipur and Udaipur. Officials said Gautam was evading arrest since 2020 and was also on the radar of the Enforcement Directorate (ED).Sangwan said that Gautam, along with his associate Arun Agrawal, ran a sophisticated investment fraud racket, luring affluent victims тАФ including doctors, engineers and businessmen тАФ with promises of high returns and quick doubling of money.To build credibility, Gautam projected himself as a high-profile investor, arriving in luxury cars, wearing expensive watches and using premium gadgets. He floated multiple shell firms to create an illusion of legitimate business operations.Police said the accused initially paid high returns to small investors to gain trust. Once confidence was established, victims invested larger sums тАФ often pooling money from friends and relatives тАФ before the accused siphoned off funds.In several cases, Gautam even accompanied victims to banks to help them secure large loans from multiple branches, enabling them to invest bigger amounts in his schemes, investigators said.What set Gautam apart, officials said, was his calculated use of his academic background. Having completed M Pharma from a Udaipur college, he used his knowledge of the medical field to target high-earning professionals and later went underground by posing as a medical practitioner.Police said he was hiding in Delhi, working at a medical store and conducting diagnostic tests while concealing his identity under a doctor’s coat and face mask.Tracking him required unusual fieldwork. Members of the cyber team visited multiple cities тАФ Jaipur, Udaipur and Delhi тАФ and posed as customers at medical stores and diagnostic labs, even giving blood samples to gather leads and confirm his presence.Acting on precise intelligence, a special team finally zeroed in on Gautam and arrested him from Lajpat Nagar in Delhi.Officials said the arrest followed nearly six months of sustained surveillance and intelligence-gathering across states under the supervision of senior officers in Dholpur.
