Charade

Jyoti Yadav, a resident from a village in Chhattisgarh state, India, recently got a job but it was shortlived.

Yadav’s online application for office assistant position at the State Bank of India (SBI), the country’s largest government bank, was quickly approved after she paid 250,000 rupees in bribe. She and many other hires trained at a local branch of SBI for two weeks before being told to wait for their assignment in another branch of the bank.

One week after she started working at the “SBI branch” that reportedly will pay her a salary of 30,000 rupees, it was raided by police. They were looking for nine people, including the manager, but only one alleged scammer was arrested.

Police said a large number of people, including Yadav, were asked for money under the pretence of securing a bank job and were sent to the fake branch for “training,” BBC reports.

The fraudsters made the bank appear legitimate with a signboard and building that convinced victims it was a real bank, according to BBC.

Meanwhile, some individuals sought settlement of their land dispute before a court of arbitration in Gandhinagar, Gujarat state, India.

To stake their claim on a public land, they petitioned the arbitrator, Morris Samuel Christian, to add his name in the district collector’s revenue records related to the plot. Christian issued the order in favor of the petitioner and it was attached to the appeal filed by a lawyer before the city civil court for enforcement.

The court registrar, Hardik Desai, recently found out that Christian is neither an arbitrator nor is the order of the tribunal genuine, The Hindu reports.

Desai complained to the Karanj police which charged Christian with pretending to hold an office as a public servant and cheating by personation.

Police raided Christian’s fake courtroom, operating since 2019 with an elaborate charade by his associates posing as court personnel, to dupe clients who paid hefty fees.

“The conman was arrested for allegedly cheating people by posing as a judge of an arbitral tribunal and passing favorable orders claiming he has been appointed as an arbitrator by a competent court to adjudicate legal disputes,” according to The Hindu.

Police said Christian wielded his gavel to pass judgments in favor of his clients in a mock courtroom setting in Gandhinagar that lent an air of legitimacy to his deceitful proceedings, the report added.