Shivraj Puri, the alleged mastermind behind the Rs 400-crore Citibank scam in Gurgaon and on the run for the last few years after he was granted bail, has been arrested again, police said. ACP (Crime) Preet Pal Sangwan, who headed the Special Investigation Team, comprising officers from the Sikanderpur police station, to investigate the matter, said: “There were no details about his whereabouts, but he had been conducting similar frauds over the years. Our team conducted technical investigation and traced him. After a month, on November 13, we found him in Dehradun, where he was operating underground. He has been sent to judicial custody. The case is still under investigation.”
Three cases of fraud have been registered against him and he has been declared a bail-jumper, said police.According to police, in 2010, Puri (40), then an employee with the Gurgaon branch of Citibank and a resident of the city’s Phase 5 area, conducted a fraud amounting up to Rs 400 crore.
A police officer said, “When he was working with Citibank, he forged bank documents and transferred Rs 400 crore from accounts of people there into accounts of other private banks.”He was arrested after the bank filed a complaint against him for siphoning off funds, and got out on bail after two years and six months. At the time, the Enforcement Directorate was probing the case against him. Police said when he was supposed to appear before a sessions court in 2018 for an appeal in the case, he was untraceable. The sessions court then declared him a proclaimed offender.Police said he had been absconding for the last few years and did not appear before the court when summoned. “Meanwhile, he was involved in a number of other fraud cases. One among them was luring people to invest money by promising them high returns,” said a police officer.
