Crop insurance fraud racket busted; 3 arrested

Jhansi: In a major crackdown on organised financial fraud, the police have unearthed a crop insurance scam involving lakhs of rupees through forged land records and arrested three accused in two related operations here on Thursday. The incident came to light after an investigation done by the deputy director, agriculture, on a complaint by Jhansi-Lalitpur MP Anurag Sharma in Dec 2025, that someone falsely claimed ‘Fasal Bima' compensation over his land. Finding the allegations correct, two separate FIRs were lodged at Prem Nagar police station and Garotha police station. Initially, a case was lodged against a number of farmers whose names surfaced in the compensation reimbursement, but during investigations it was found that they too were duped by the three accused and were victims.Additional SP Areeba Nomaan disclosed that police arrested three accused in this connection- Paras Nayak, 26, Bhupendra Singh Rajpoot, 29, and Ritik Tiwari alias Ranu, 21- all from Jalaun district.Revealing the modus operandi of the accused, ASP Nomaan said that Paras and Ritik were working as block coordinator and surveyor for IFFCO Tokio General Insurance Company, which insured the farmers under ‘Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojna'. Both of them used to lure innocent farmers and take details of their land records. They then uploaded forged documents with cahnged details on insurance portals to claim compensation fraudulently. Bhupendra, owner of a cybercafé, used to help them in forging and uploading the documents.Investigations revealed that Ritik fraudulently claimed Rs 1.64 lakh while Paras and Bhupendra embezzled Rs 10 lakh.