The arrested persons have been identified as Ali Mirza Darvesh and John Sayed Hussain, both from Thane, Maharashtra.
Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Akash Kulhary, said that the accused claimed that their forefathers had come from Tehran and hence referred themselves as ‘Iranian gang’.
“We are working on the ‘Iranian gang module’ and will probe more on it and its modus operandi,” he said.
Acting on a tip-off, the police arrested the duo from near Kukrail embankment crossing.
They were trying to escape to Mumbai ahead of Bakri Eid.
Police said that Darvesh was also arrested in a similar case from Gudumba in November 2022 and then got bail and began conning again.
The miscreants owned up their crime and disclosed that they had committed several incidents of conning across Lucknow.
The police claimed that as many as 31 cases of conning were registered in Ashiana, PGI, Gomti Nagar, Gomti Nagar Vistar, Ghazipur, Thakurganj and other localities this year.
Kulhary said that they used to stay at the hotels in PGI and Gomti Nagar and used to conduct a recee of the lone stretches of the road in the city.
“The miscreants confessed that they used to target elderly men and women and used to con them while intimidating them in the name of police checking. Police made the arrests on the basis of CCTV footage recovered from the spot of the crime,” said Kulhary.
ACP, Ghazipur (Indiranagar), D.K. Singh said that a team was conducting checking in the area when the informer told them about the suspects who were going towards Sarvodaya Nagar embankment from Mahanagar and trying to flee to Maharashtra via flight.
“They used to come via flight from Maharashtra, commit crime and go back,” said Singh.
The police also recovered ornaments worth more than Rs 50 lakhs from their possession.
Police said that the accused had conned people of ornaments worth Rs 2 crore.
–IANS
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