Seven member gang caught in rice pulling scam

HYDERABAD: Inspired by videos on Youtube about rice pulling cheating, a 34- year-old stone cutter, made a rice pulling equipment and showing it, he started collecting money from people, saying that they had rice pulling equipment with them, which is valued in crores in the market. Medipally police arrested Peela Rangaiah and six others who had been cheating gullible victims.

“Their target was gullible public, who believed in mystical powers of rice pulling equipment. So far they have collected around Rs15 lakh by duping people.” said E Ramachandra Reddy, DCP Yadadri. Police recovered Rs 3,100 cash and a Samsung J7 mobile.

Based on a tip off about movement of new persons in Satyanarayanapuram village, police raided the house on Friday and found the seven suspects and the ‘rice pulling’ equipment in the house. They told police that they have taken the room on rent for Rs 2,500 a week ago and were looking out for victims in the surrounding villages and collected money from them. He purchased a copper vessel, small submersible motor, tube light, magnet, magnetic powder, mosquito repellent, oilandsand rice from Koti market. Later, he made the equipment and gave a demo of it to his friends.

The copper vessel is wrapped with a brown colour adhesive tape, to which the tubelight is connected and a plastic pipe to supply water is passed through this tubelight, and the other end of the tubelight is connected to a thermocol box. In this box, a motor is placed to pump water to the vessel. He also coated the rice grains with edible oil, as they get attracted easily to magnets. During the demo, only the vessel will be visible, while the other parts would be hidden. After switching on the equipment, when rice gets attracted towards the magnet, he would spray mosquito repellant, so that the victim think a miracle is happening.