A non-resident Indian from Kerala -- MV Uthup Varghese, who is an accused in Rs 200 crore nursing recruitment scam -- was arrested from a hotel in Abu Dhabi on Thursday.
The 48-year-old owner of Al Zarafa Travel and Manpower Consultants was arrested by the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) with the help of UAE officials following a request by the Central Bureau of Investigaton (CBI).
The Interpol had issued a red corner notice against Varghese on the CBI's request. He is now likely to be taken to Kerala city of Kochi from Abu Dhabi after some formalities.
"Even though the arrests have been made, there are lots of procedures to be followed before he is actually brought to Kerala. It could even take more than a week for all the formalities to be conducted and only after that will he brought to Kochi, where the case has been registered," IANS quoted a CBI official as saying.
Varghese's Kochi-based recruitment firm had allegedly collected Rs 19.5 lakh from each nurse against a service charge of Rs 19,500 for job in Kuwait. He is reported to have recruited about 1,000 nurses in about a year.
The scam came to the notice of the investigating officers after the agency refused to return money to a nurse, who decided not to take up the job offered by the recruitment agency.
This was followed by a raid in March this year, when the Income Tax Department seized Rs 3 crore unaccounted money from the agency's offices in Bengaluru and Kochi.
Varghese's application for an anticipatory bail was rejected by the Kerala High Court in June, prompting him to shuttle between India and the UAE, where he runs a travel agency.
Earlier, the CBI had arrested Adolf Lawrence, Protector of Emigrants (PoE) for helping Varghese in the recruitment scam. However, he was granted bail on 29 July.
