15 June 2012
Got call at around 4 pm from an NGO called Relief India Trust. The guy sounded really miserable, as if was a pro in acting. Here’s what he said, “There’s a patient, an 11 year old child admitted to AIIMS hospital and needs to be operated immediately. The doctor, some Anand Bakshi wrote a letter to this NGO that the total medicine or operation cost (he himself wasn’t sure) cost was arount 5 Lakhs and needs to be deposited immediately to save the child.” Since it was the first time that I received such a call for donation, I was pretty doubtful. I immediately noted down the name of the organization and googled it. They had a website (Removed website name, reason is mentioned in the last paragraph of the blog) when I went to the website, I got even more doubtful, It looked less like an NGO and more like a publishing or a boosting website, I don’t know but for some reason it dint give me a feel like I was visiting an NGO’s website. Next immediately after the 1st two search results on Google, the next thing you get is a consumer forum complaints websites link. To my surprise I found around tons of complaints lodged for this NGO. The agent was still over the phone and when I told him about what I was seeing, I guess the call was immediately taken by his supervisor, this usually happens in a call center, I know this cause I have myself worked in one. The supervisor only receives a call if the agent is not able to handle the customer. No doubt the supervisor sounded a pro person in convincing. She said she was herself an advocate Chauhan. She tried convincing me by saying that consumer forum will have complains for every single organization, and if I want a proof I can check if they have complains for CRY as well. Well, I was still not convinced, reason being, there was not a single website or organization or news website that praised this NGO for their job. I obviously did not donate, instead I told the person that I will research again and let them know if I want to donate or not.
After the call I browsed again on Google to see if I get at least one good thing about this organization. This is what I googled for “good job relief India trust” results were still negative. The only search that appeared 1st was the name of their website, on which I already gave my views about. Next I started reading all complains on the consumer forum website. Then I got to know that this is a fake NGO. What they actually do is, they have a call center of around 250 agents. They collect cases from famous hospitals like AIIMS where the parents won’t be able to pay money for any severe operation. They will collect all the documents as a proof for posting it on their website and once done, will start calling at random(mostly they get the numbers from mobile companies itself). After calling they’ll cry for help just like the person who spoke to me did. And this company(I wont call it an NGO now) collects around 90 lakhs every single month. Not a single penny is donated or given to the needy. I got this thing as well from the complains itself. And to prove that its an NGO they have opened a small physiotherapy home where they have 5 to 6 children and they claim that they have 40 children whom they help.
In one of the complains I read, I found that one of the person actually donated Rs. 22000 and later on they sent him a thanking letter and informed him that the operation was accomplished successfully. When he tried getting the contact details of the patient these people from Relief India Trust denied giving any details saying they dint have any info. He himself later on tried getting the details of the customer and found the patient’s father’s phone number which he has also posted on the website as a proof for anyone to verify. After calling the patient’s father he got to know that the operation was never done and he never received any money and he was still waiting for the operation to be done.
How can these people loot citizens like this? Why is there no police action over this? I am personally going to post this on news website as well.
I had this blog on google blogger. But this fake company seems to have earned so much now that they have hired organisations to send notices to have this blog removed, since it hampers their income in some or the other way. Glad i could do this to them.
Roshan's Blog 