The former managing director of a little-known Indian company that claimed to be selling the world’s cheapest smartphone has been arrested for fraud, police said yesterday.
Mohit Goel, boss of the domestic handset maker Ringing Bells, was taken into custody in Ghaziabad after a distributor complained it had not received phones worth Rs1.6mn (around $24,000).
Ayam Enterprises said it had paid Rs3mn ($45,000) after Goel persuaded it to distribute the Freedom 251 smartphone in November 2015 but only received 1.4mn rupees’ worth.
Deputy superintendent of police, Manish Kumar Mishra, said Goel had been arrested in Ghaziabad, which is on the outskirts of New Delhi, and was presented in court yesterday. “He’s been charged with fraud and forgery. Investigations into the matter will continue,” Mishra said.
Mishra said police were on the hunt for four other officials of Ringing Bells who were named in Ayam’s complaint.
Ringing Bells, based in the Delhi satellite city of Noida, was set up in September 2015 and began selling mobile phones via its website last February.
The demand for the Freedom 251, which was priced at Rs251, was so great that its website crashed within hours of the launch.
At the time, Ringing Bells reportedly claimed that it was receiving hundreds of thousands of hits per second, without clarifying how many of those were converted into orders.
Goel has reportedly said Ringing Bells was ready to pay back its distributors by March 31.
“The payments of several distributors were pending and we have promised to pay them by March 31. I still don’t know what transpired,” Goel told the Hindustan Times daily.
Goel quit as Ringing Bells’ managing director in December, handing over the reins to his brother. Mishra said at least three other similar cases have been filed against Goel over the past year.
