Ringing Bells Director Mohit Goel (right) and CEO Dhaarna Goel had begun the sale of Freedom 251 handsets, boosted as the world's cheapest, via its website freedom251.com in February last year. Former HRD Minister and Senior BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi flagged off the inauguration of Rs 251 Mobile phone in India with much media fanfare.

Mohit Goel, the Director of Noida-based company Ringing Bells which had announced Freedom251 smartphones at an astonishingly low price of Rs 251 per piece, was detained on Thursday here on allegations of fraud.

Uttar pradesh police Ghaziabad Deputy SP Manish Mishra said Goel has been detained for interrogation in the matter. Goel has been detained after owner of Ghaziabad-based Ayam Enterprises filed an FIR on Wednesday alleging that Ringing Bells "defrauded" it of Rs 16 lakh.

In the FIR, Ayam Enterprises has said it was persuaded by Goel and others from Ringing Bells to take up the distributorship of the Freedom251 phones in November 2015."We paid Rs 30 lakh to Ringing Bells through RTGS on different occasions. But it delivered us product worth Rs 14 lakh only. The owners of Ayam Enterprises claim that they were threatened with life if they asked for the rest Rs 16 lakh.

Those registered in website by paying 251 Rs online claimed nothing has come and this project landed in a controversy, many alleging it was like ponzi scheme.

Ringing bells company website freedom251.com said “ Dear friends, we are very grateful for your enormous response … and would submit that as of now we received approx. 6 Lacs hits per second … servers are over loaded,” “…we… are therefore taking a pause and upgrading the service and will revert within or before 24 hours.” but the same website since then has found not working.