A few weeks ago, police in India discovered that scammers had set up a fake bank branch – complete with a logo, office furniture and even some employees – in a village in Chhattisgarh state. BBC Hindi pieced together what happened.<\/strong><\/p>\n Jyoti Yadav was delighted when she got a job as an office assistant at a recently opened bank branch near her village.<\/p>\n She had been job-hunting for four years, facing increasing financial pressure.<\/p>\n The bank officials asked her to join immediately, and she agreed because it was the State Bank of India (SBI), the country’s largest government-backed lender and one of its most recognisable brands.<\/p>\n But just a week after she joined, the police and employees from a nearby branch of SBI arrived at the bank – about 200 km (124 miles) from Chhattisgarh’s capital, Raipur – and told them it was fake.<\/p>\n Yadav was stunned. She said the people who gave her a job had conducted an interview, issued her an appointment letter and provided an identity card, with a promised salary of 30,000 rupees ($357; \u00a3273) a month. She had begun work along with five others.<\/p>\n Police have arrested one person and say they are on the lookout for eight others.<\/p>\n Employment-related scams are not uncommon in India, where millions of young people are desperate<\/a> to find a stable job<\/a>. In 2022, more than two dozen men who thought they would get jobs with the Indian Railways were tricked into counting trains<\/a> for days.<\/p>\n The job crisis is particularly acute in small towns and villages, where work opportunities are limited, often forcing young people to take risks such as paying bribes – which is illegal in India – for jobs that promise to secure their future.<\/p>\n The police said that the six employees of the fake bank came from financially weak backgrounds, and that some of them had paid substantial amounts as bribes for the job.<\/p>\n