Police Bureau of Investigation (PBI) arrested three persons of a gang that cheated at least 55 youths with fake appointment letters of National Board of Revenue (NBR), Chattogram Custom House, Bangladesh Army and Chattogram Port. Members of the gang took bribes of Tk 8-26 lakh from each person for these jobs.

Md Moyeen Uddin, additional police superintendent of PBI in Chattogram, made the disclosure yesterday.

The arrestees are: Atiqur Rahman Chowdhury (38), Tofazzal Hossain (54) and Ripon Shikdar (30).

Moyeen said Atiqur scoped and lured job seekers, introducing himself as “customs officer Anwar”. Ripon and Tofazzal prepared question papers, admit cards, recruitment notices, police verification and health documents for candidates.

“During primary investigation, we found some customs and NBR officials are involved with the gang,” he added.

He said Ripon was arrested from Dhaka’s Sabujbagh on December 12 and the others from Chattogram’s Pathantuli on Tuesday.

Santosh Kumar Chakma, an inspector of PBI, said, “We seized two mobile phones and a pen drive from Ripon and in that pen drive, we found police verification and health certificates, recruitment notices, admit cards and appointment letters for 27 posts at NBR, 23 posts at Chattogram Custom House, four of Bangladesh Army and one at Chattogram port.”

He said the police verification reports and health certificates are real, and for rest of the documents, special paper was used. It would not have been possible for the job seekers to doubt anything, he added.

A victim named Ajoy Bhattacharjee filed a case -- with Nilphamari Police Station -- against Atiqur Rahman Chowdhury for cheating him and his brother-in-law Milon Chakrabarti. He claimed that he deposited Tk 26,30,000 in seven instalments in a bank account as per Atiqur’s instructions -- for two computer operator posts at Chattogram Custom House.

According to custom house sources, Ajoy Bhattacharjee, Milon Chakrabarti, Saiful Islam and Abdul Gafur come to the custom house with appointment letters on September 9 but Commissioner of Customs Md Fakhrul Alam told them the documents they had were all fake.

On September 11, the customs commissioner wrote a letter to NBR chairman to take action against the forgers.