Computer Shop dupes Lamington partners

MUMBAI, INDIA: Even as channel partners come to terms with the recent fraud in Mumbai amounting to Rs 80 lakh, another incident at Lamington Road has further shocked the IT channel community in the region.

Eight to 10 dealers operating from Lamington Road allege that Balwant Singh, Proprietor, Computer Shop, who was also operating from the same market, has duped them to the extent of Rs 30 lakh. Singh is now absconding, leaving the affected partners in a lurch.

Dilip Jain of Rajendra Computech, who claims to have been duped by the company to the tune of Rs 2 lakh mentioned, “Balwant Singh has worked with several partners at Lamington Road for the past four to five years. However, about four to five months back he started his own venture and opened a company by the name of Computer Shop. Since he was known to us, we trust him and extended materials amounting to Rs 2 lakh to him. Initially, he used to make cheque payments and we could easily realize the amount. However, later I got suspicious and hence closed his account, only to realize that he has absconded.”

Jain further clarified that Singh was reachable on his cell number only till June 6 and has been unreachable since then. “I have notified the Lamington Road police station on June 15 and have written a letter to them. However, in the past there have been many instances when the officials at Lamington Road police station have not shown keen interest in resolving our issues. They will chase a given case for sometime, and even if a defaulter is arrested, he knows that he will be bailed or will escape punishment. This is the only reason why such crimes are increasingly becoming the order of the day.”

According to Dilip Jain, Proprietor, Rajendra Computech, Singh had opened yet another account in the name of Praveen Singh and was using it to deal with several partners. Computer Shop had purchased Gigabyte and Asus motherboards, and Intel CPUs from Rajendra Computech.

Sunil Jain of SK Impex, yet another affected dealer shared, “The exact amount of fraud is yet to be arrived at. However, given that at least eight to 10 partners have been affected by the issue, it should be somewhere over Rs 30 lakh. Until one month ago, the situation was good and Computer Shop was making payments on time. However, all of a sudden, Balwant Singh shut down his shop at Lamington Raod and vanished. He had bought AOC monitors, DVD writers and other IT products from us and is not traceable now.”

Jain corroborated that an official complaint has been logged against Computer Shop at the Lamington Road police station on June 15. In order to get to the base of the matter and resolve it, all the dealers who have been duped took part in an informal meeting at Lamington Road on June 16.

Mumbai-based Trade Association of Information Technology (TAIT) informed The DQ Week that the association had received an official complaint against Computer Shop last week from Rajendra Computech. “We are now probing the matter and looking at ways to resolve it,” shared Anees Khalfey, President, TAIT.

Computer Shop could not be contacted at the time of filing the report.