Right from independence, India has seen lots of scams, but there are some that are noteworthy and to be honest, very intelligent indeed. Here are the Top 3 Most Intelligent Crimes Committed in India.
Intelligent Crimes Committed in India #1 Mr. Natwarlal, The Master Con Man of India
Natwarlal was a noted Indian con man known for having repeatedly “sold” the Taj Mahal, the Red Fort, the Rashtrapati Bhavan and also the Parliament House of India. He was a master in forging signatures of famous personalities and used novel cheating ideas.
Big industrialists like Birla and Ambani also were not spared by him. He posed as social worker or a needy person and duped them. He duped many shop-owners with lakhs of rupees, paying them by cheque and demand drafts, which were later found to be forged by him.
Natwarlal was last seen on June 24, 1996, at 84, when he vanished while being transported from prison to a hospital for treatment. He disappeared at New Delhi railway station, after which he was never seen by anyone. He was famous all over the world for being a master con man.
Intelligent Crimes Committed in India #2 Opera house burglary
On March 19, 1987, Police Headquarters in Mumbai received a phone call that the city’s exclusive jewelry store, Opera House came under a CBI raid. They complained that the head of the raid party took a lot of jewelry and decamped. What puzzled police was that the CBI team that staged the raid was still there when they arrived, except for their leader, who they knew as Mohan Singh.
He had met the team members and selected them in an interview after placing a classified ad in the March 18th issue of The Times of India, asking for “Dynamic Graduates for Intelligence and Security Officers Post”. What the participants never knew was that he was a master con artist. Mumbai police put a nationwide alert to catch ‘Mohan Singh,’ but never caught him. Police said it was a perfect crime.
The Bollywood movie Special 26 was inspired by this real life crime. But the plot of the movie was a little different from the original one. The main difference is that the robbery was not committed by a gang of 4, but just a single man.
Intelligent Crimes Committed in India #3 Bhawal Sanyasi, The Princely Imposer
The Bhawal Sanyasi case has been one of the most strange among judicial cases in British India. Bhawal was a zamindar near Dhaka, Bangladesh. It was closely supervised by the British bureaucracy. It had an Englishman as a manager. After the Zamindar died, it passed to his three sons. The second son, Ramendra, died in Darjeeling in 1905.
Several years later, in 1921, a Sadhu appeared in Dhaka. People soon noticed many resemblances between him and the supposedly dead Ramendra. Several literate Indians were convinced of his identity. The British official world, on the other hand, looked upon him as a pretender. Ramendra’s wife refused to accept him as her husband. The sadhu claimed his 1/3rd share from the revenues of the zamindari.
The Court of Wards which was administering the zamindari refused the claim and the matter went to the court. From the very beginning, there was a clear division between the British officialdom and the Bengali elite. The Bengali elite was siding with the sadhu. The judgment in the first trial went in favor of the claimant. The Court of Wards appealed to the Calcutta High Wards. After some delay caused by the Second World War, which kept one of the assigned judges stranded in London, the High Court too found in favor of the claimant in 1940. The Privy Council too ruled in favor of the claimant on July 30, 1946. The judgment was telegraphed to Calcutta the next day.
That very day the claimant went to the Kali temple to offer prayers upon his victory. He suffered a stroke there. He died two days later.
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