Odisha Police arrested two brothers in Dhenkenal district for allegedly posing as Enforcement Directorate (ED) officers, and extorting money from the government officials.
The police on Sunday said two accused - Tarinisen Mohapatra (30) and Brahmashankar Mohapatra (27) were arrested by the Special Task Force (STF) of the state police from their home in Dhenkanal town on Saturday.
The accused borrowed a huge amount of money and were not being able to repay the lenders, they said adding the duo hatched a plan to cheat government employees.
Posing as "Additional Director of ED Bhubaneswar", they contacted about 300 officers of different government departments of the state over the phone.
They succeeded in extorting money from some of the officers, and in total payments of more than Rs 16 lakh have been traced. They used to take payments through PhonePe and GPay, and issued fake "clearance letters" to the officers, clearing them of all "charges".
They were arrested on the basis of a complaint lodged by Chhatrapur sub-collector Debadatta Mohanta, an STF officer said.
A laptop, a desktop, five mobile phones, bank passbooks and chequebooks, fake ID cards and 17 ATM cards were seized from them, he said.
(With PTI inputs)
