Madhya Pradesh: Traders cheat 31 farmers of Rs 80 lakh, escape after issuing fake cheques

Two farmers’ traders swindled nearly Rs 80 lakh amount from 31 farmers of six villages in the town of Jabalpur of Madhya Pradesh by buying their agriculture produce and issuing cheque from an unbalanced bank account to the farmers.

Police sources said the incident was in the Katangi area, during April, when the accused traders bought about 6,000 quintals of wheat and 150 quintal of gram (chana) from local farmers. In order to build trust with the farmers, the traders first settled Rs 11 lakh and issued a cheque for almost Rs 80 lakh for the balance amount.

But the cheque was dishonored by the bank as it was not good for want of funds from the farmer. However, the impacted farmers went to Police authorities and filed complaints after their demands for recovery were rejected a few times.

On the complaint, Katangi Police filed a cheating case against both the accused traders – Raja Singh Lodhi and Sohan Lodhi, who are brothers.

Investigators are now digging deeper into the extent of involvement of the traders, where they sold the state-purchased grain? And how widespread the fraud is elsewhere. Police are also attempting to track Local Accountability transactions and recover farmers’ pending outstanding dues.

The incident has triggered worry about the safety of agricultural transactions that do not involve the government procurement system. Farmers have called for tougher measures against the accused and quick repayment of their funds, citing the fraud has brought them a lot of losses ahead of the next farming season.

An in-depth investigation is ongoing.