A case has been registered against an unknown person in Gujarat who had placed an ad to ‘sell’ the Statue of Unity in Kevadiya in Narmada district on OLX, according to media reports.
An unknown user from Gujarat had placed an ad selling the Statue of Unity for ₹30,000 crore on OLX, an online trading platform for second-hand goods last week.
The user had claimed to sell the memorial statue to raise funds for health services and equipment to combat the spread of the coronavirus pandemic in the country.
The original listing on OLX had later been taken down. A screenshot of the listing had also been posted to social media platform Reddit has also now been taken down.
“'Emergency! Selling Statue of Unity because of urgent money required for the hospitals and healthcare equipment,” the description read in the original listing on OLX.
The 182 metres memorial statue in honour of Sardar Patel is the world’s tallest such structure had been inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2018.
The memorial's authorities were alerted by a newspaper who had run an article on the same and had later approached the police about the listing. A cheating and forgery case has been registered against the user who posted the listing under IPC, Epidemic Diseases Act and Information Technology Act as per media reports.
PM-CARES
The Union government last month had set up a fund to raise donations for fighting the COVID-19 pandemic n the country.
The Prime Minister's Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund (PM-CARES) was announced on March 28.
Since then, the PM Cares fund has been privy to frauds and misinformation. For instance, the State Bank of India last week had warned users of fake Unified Payments Interface (UPI) IDs being circulated across platforms masked as the UPI ID for the PM Cares fund to mislead people.
“Beware of Fake UPI ID being circulating on the pretext of PM CARES Fund. #PIBFactcheck: The correct UPI ID of #PMCaresFunds is pmcares@sbi,” PIB Fact Check had captioned a snapshot of the fake ID on Twitter.