The Gurugram Police have busted a call centre, operating illegally from 35 rooms of Hotel Radisson in Udyog Vihar. According to the Police, the promoters of the company Saburi TLC World Wide service Pvt Ltd (previously known as TLC), have not only violated the norms of social distancing but also pressurized their employees to work from the hotel. According to Hotel Management, they were not aware of these activities. On Friday late night, Gurugram Police raided the hotel and arrested four employees of the firm, it's Director and Hotel's General Manager and Director of rooms. According to the company's Director, the firm has its office in Spaze IT building at Sohna Road, but it was shut down due to Nationwide Lockdown across the country.
Police said that the firm is currently engaged in selling tech supports and add-on services to its consumers. According to the Police, the rooms in the hotels were booked for a month from March 22. The Gurugram Cybercrime Police team raided the hotel on Friday night and found over 20 employees working in the rooms. To which the company's director failed to provide any license to run an illegal call centre. In recent times, many fake call centres were busted for scamming consumers across the globe by claiming to provide "technical support".
According to Police commissioner Muhammad Akil, the hotel management had not informed Police or administration regarding the running of call centre in hotel rooms. The employees of this firm were living in a hotel without undergoing any medical examination. More than 100 executives were living in the premium rooms while business-class rooms were booked for top management.
Assistant Commissioner of Police (DLF), Karan Goel said that Police have retrieved some emails in which the company had written to provide rooms for working. To which General Manager replied that they can provide LAN cables to the rooms. The company did not sought permission to operate in the hotel and had not sought approval from the Department of Telecommunication (DOT) to shift their office to the hotel. More than three employees were working in one room without masks and without maintaining any social distance. They were not even provided masks. The employees were forced to work for 12 hours a day and were threatened with pay cuts if they didn't. Police have also seized four laptops, nine workstations and five mobile phones from the hotel rooms along with some documents. Goel said that cyber experts are analyzing the data in computers and laptops.
The Gurugram Police have registered a case under section 188 (Disobedience to order duly promulgated by public servant), 120 B (conspiracy), section 51 disaster management act, Section 66 of Information Technology Act and 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code at Cyber police station. The Police will now write to DOT to cancel the company's licenses and will verify all the documents provided by them.
The director of rooms at Radisson Hotel, Ankush Talwar said that he was unaware that the rooms will be used to run a call centre and employees' temperature were monitored every day and were not allowed to move out. The staff used to deliver their food at the door.
Those arrested include company's director Anuj Jain, Apurva Goswami, Siddharth Thakur, Naveen Kumar Sharma, and Deepak Kumar Chaubey. Hotel's general manager Namit Vij was also arrested. Police have also seized the digital video recorder (DVR) of the hotel.
