Casanova imposter held for duping city jewellers

LUCKNOW: City police arrested an imposter in Aliganj here on Friday, for duping at least six city jewellers by posing as an income tax officer and joint secretary level officer. They said he used to get away with gold and silver ornaments by giving forged cheques to the jewellers.

Interestingly, the fraudster was quite a Casanova, with two wives and 16 girl friends.

Circle officer (CO), Aliganj, Deepak Kumar Singh said the accused Ajai Kumar Mishra swindled gold and silver ornaments worth ₹ 80 lakh from the city jewellers in the past few months. Ornaments and other valuables worth ₹ 5 lakh have been recovered from his possession.

The CO said Mishra had multiple identities as Atul Kumar Mishra and Pramod Kumar Mishra and posed as an income tax officer or joint secretary in the CM’s secretariat. He said Mishra approached the jewellers and purchased some gold ornaments and thereafter returned with a bigger order of multiple sets of the same type of ornaments. He said the jewellers often fell in his trap when he showed his forged identity card and easily gave him the gold products in return for cheques.

He said the cheques given by the accused were forged but he used to disappear and switch off his mobile numbers before the jewellers came to know about his fraud.

Singh said the accused was so smart that he never sold the gold ornaments as he knew that he would be tracked . He borrowed money from finance companies in return for gold ornaments .

The CO said Mishra lived a luxurious life in a three bedroom flat in the city, travelled in a chauffeur driver SUV and wore branded clothes and watches. He had two wives as well as 16 girl friends to whom he gave expensive gifts to impress them.

He said the police found the numbers of his wives and girl friends from his mobile phone and informed them about his real identity. He had told his wives and girl friends that he was an income tax officer and nobody suspected him due to his lifestyle, the CO added.

He said Mishra’s involvement was suspected in similar frauds with jewellers in other districts too and a police team was trying to extract more information from him.