Even as the nation is yet to forget how a conman from Gujarat, Kiran Patel, was arrested from Jammu and Kashmir for posing as a senior officer from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), one more man from Gujarat has been arrested for perpetrating a similar con.
A man has been arrested from Vadodara in Gujarat for posing as a PMO official. He faked being a PMO official while trying to secure admission for two children in a private school and trying to dupe the school of huge amounts of money with his fake identity.
Police have arrested Mayank Tiwari. His arrest comes months after an Ahmedabad resident, Kiran Patel, was held from a five-star hotel in Jammu and Kashmir for posing as a senior official from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). Kiran Patel had also conned top officials in the Valley and had availed of Z security.
Like Kiran Patel, Mayank Tiwari also faked himself to be a Director (strategic advisor) attached to the PMO. He said he was from PMO, Delhi. He got in touch with an eminent private school in Vadodara.
Delhi. Tiwari first got in touch with the school and one of its trustees in March 2022.
He wanted two sons of his close friend Mirza Baig to be admitted to the school which is located in the Waghodia area of Vadodara. He said his family friend Baig was a senior officer with the Indian Army and was being transferred from Pune to Vadodara.
The School got in touch with one of their trustees, who eventually found Mayank Tiwari to be a complicated personality. He saved Tiwari’s WhatsApp status which described him as a PMO official. The fake PMO official Tiwari sought a favour and said he would get the school several projects from the Prime Minister if the two kids’ fees were waived by the school. Interestingly, the trustee smelt a rat when a top-ranking PMO official who claimed to be a director working with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s office sought a favour.
According to the Waghodia police, the fake PMO official also said he had very high-level contacts and if a certain amount of money was given to him, he would bag several education and research contracts for the school and a private university where the school trustee was attached. The trustee, a lady, then informed the school which filed an FIR and registered a case against Mayank Tiwari under Indian Penal Code sections 406 (criminal breach of trust), 420 (cheating), and 170 (personating a public servant). He was then arrested.
A version of this article was originally published on Vibes of India.