Natwarlal, who ‘sold’ the Taj Mahal thrice and Red Fort once, all on stamp paper and duly registered, was a legendary cheat. Immortalised by feature films, including an Amitabh Bachchan-starrer, Natwarlal became a synonym for confidence tricksters. He was in and out of jail, once having jumped it.Four decades later, there has emerged a new genre of Natwarlals – over a dozen of them. Smart, suave and glib talking, they all claim a Sangh parivar background. Or they seem familiar with the working style of the Narendra Modi establishment and the duties and functions of its leading lights. And a Gujarat connection, ethnic or professional, makes it a perfect brew.India has never ever witnessed such a surge of conmen claiming links with the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). Under the somewhat transparent system of governance India had under Manmohan Singh and A.B. Vajpayee, political dynamics determined official decisions. This provided little role for conmen. Conmen thrive in situations where decisions are guided by one individual’s preferences.They all claim access to the PM or his top aides. Claimed links with Amit Shah, kinship or association, are equally effective. Liaison with BJP president J.P. Nadda also works but only as a secondary option. That is why you find very few claiming Nadda’s patronage among the Modi era political tricksters and power peddlers. And one of them is Neeraj Singh Rathod, who belongs to Morbi in Gujarat.Rathod operated among BJP MLAs in Maharashtra, Haryana, Delhi, West Bengal and Jharkhand and specialised in brokering cabinet berths for aspiring ministers. For this, he used his position as Nadda’s ‘personal assistant’. At the time of his arrest, there were 28 MLAs on his list of ‘clients.’ Of these, three MLAs had paid him his “brokerage” for the cash-for-cabinet-berths service.Among Rathod’s victims were the labharthi (beneficiary) MLAs from such faraway states as Goa and Nagaland. Police found out that the money thus collected was remitted into the online account of a mobile shop near Rathod’s house. Rathod was arrested on the complaint of a Delhi BJP MLA to whom he had promised a senior position in the PM Awas Yojana. Police found that to convince a client about his access to Nadda, Rathod once mimicked the latter’s voice on the phone.Going by the long list of conmen, Amit Shah is at the top of the power dispensers’ graph. He has many ‘nephews’ and representatives. Some of them were active even before he became Union home minister in 2019. ‘Nephew-2016’ was the first recorded case of Amit Shah’s power dealers. His real name was Yash Amin but he went around as Viraj Shah and sold ministerships and other positions to BJP leaders. In 2016, he was arrested for duping a BJP leader of Rs 80,000. The victim alleged that Yash took money but did not do the job.Four years later, Yash Amin resurfaced as Shah’s nephew and resorted to the same modus operandi. Most of those who were defrauded by ‘Nephew-2020’ wisely avoided bad publicity. But Yogindra Upadhyaya, BJP MLA, filed a police complaint against him for cheating Rs 40,000.The latest to surface was ‘Nephew-2023’. This Viraj Shah, whose real name is Viraj Ashwin Patel, also calls himself Amit Shah’s ‘nephew’ who ‘works’ at the Gujarat chief minister’s office. He also introduces himself as ‘president’ of the Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT City).He duped several models, offering to make them GIFT City’s brand ambassador. Some have filed police complaints. Hailing from Sargasan in Gandhinagar, his labharthis were mainly BJP MLAs in Maharashtra, UP, Haryana and Rajasthan. He offered to “fix” ministerships at the Centre or in BJP-ruled states.Brajesh Rattan, another conman, did not present himself as a ‘nephew’ but freely drops Amit Shah’s name. Around April last year, a Mumbai-based businessman Praval Choudhary filed a police complaint alleging that Brijesh Ratan and others cheated him of Rs 2 crore. This was in lieu of getting a Rs 100 crore contract with the railways.However, Ratan’s father who is s BJP leader and member of a railway panel, denied such allegation against his son. “Had I been a tainted person, why would the government yet again give me this responsibility?” he asked. The association with Amit Shah’s name scared the media and nothing much was heard about the complaint since then.Now, meet Kiranbhai Jagdishbhai Patel, New India’s biggest political conman who earlier this year made headlines for his many daring escapades. Patel has been a product of the Modi style of PMO-centric administrative control with its opaque working system. In the good old days of democracy and openness, no unauthorised person could go to a state, get Z+ security, free stay and summon senior officials and give orders – all on behalf of the prime minister.This was precisely what the Ahmedabad-born Kiran Patel did for years. His ethnicity and namedropping fooled the entire bureaucracy in Jammu and Kashmir, where the security apparatus is most active. When he claimed he was the ‘Additional Director in PMO (Strategy and Campaign)’, throwing weight about and ordering officials, everyone followed him in awe. For months, he moved around in a bulletproof car, two escort vehicles and a dozen SSB gunmen.During his first visit, he was accompanied by his daughter and wife Malini Patel who is alleged to be involved in a Rs 15 crore cheating case. During another Kashmir visit, Kiran Patel took along Amit Pandya, son of a senior official of the Gujarat CMO, and businessman Jay Sivji Sitapara. The CMO official subsequently resigned, owning moral responsibility.Patel, along with his entourage, went to the Line of Control (LOC), Gulmarg and Dal Lake with elaborate security cover, often accompanied by state officials. He was first introduced to Kashmir officials by a senior Rajasthan RSS leader. He also discussed state affairs with the media in charge of the BJP. In Kulgam, he enjoyed the tourism department’s hospitality. In January last, he held a G-20-related meeting at Surat on behalf of the PM. A local jeweller said he was personally invited by Patel.The Gujarat police said Patel had been visiting the Valley right from 2015 for “review meetings” on behalf of the PM. He held BJP workers’ meetings in Gujarat and frequented ‘Kamalam’, the BJP headquarters in Koba, CMO and the state secretariat. Patel also visited Russia to ‘discuss’ defence cooperation.Sanjay Prakash Rai Sherpuria is another Modi-era conman who made it big. However, the lack of Gujarat ethnicity was a drawback for him. He more than made up for this with his ingenuity and creativity. His residential address was ‘1, beside Race Course’, Delhi, He flaunts his photographs along with Narendra Modi, Amit Shah and Nadda, Mohan Bhagwat and Anurag Thakur. Sanjay Rai ‘Sherpuria’. Photo: Facebook/Sanjay SherpuriyaAfter his arrest in April, it was revealed that he had collected a Rs 6 crore donation from a Delhi industrialist for his trust. The Union animal welfare department provided his outfit with Rs 2 crore ‘assistance’. The UP police have also arrested Kashif, Sherpuria’s accomplice.Sherpuria described himself as an “author, Covid hero, and entrepreneur”. He used his contacts to fix things for third parties. He took Rs 11 crore from a Delhi businessman to ‘manage’ his problems with the Enforcement Directorate. His wife Kanchan is accused of defrauding the SBI of Rs 350 crore. He was also trying hard to get the BJP ticket from Ghazipur in UP.His area of operation is so wide that he provided an ‘unsecured loan’ loan of Rs 25 lakh to J&K Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha. He created over 56 companies under dummy directors in which he pumped in funds as startup support. This was, it is alleged, a clever device to launder money earned by unfair means. These are the big fish but the Modi era has been the ‘Amrit Kaal’ for conmen of all sizes. Here are some minor fraudsters who tried but failed to make it big:Ankit Kumar Singh claimed to be a secretary in PMO and working in Modi’s Varanasi constituency, was arrested for seeking favours from local officials and others.Vasudev Nivtuti Tayde was caught in Pune, where he was on a ‘secret’ mission from the PMO – where he claimed he was a deputy secretary.Police have arrested a law graduate for impersonating an IAS officer serving at the Chief Vigilance Commission (CVC), from Mumbai.Satyendra Prakash Chaturvedi was another minor fraudster who was arrested from Bareilly where he was posing as an IAS officer posted at the PMO.An ‘IAS officer’ of the home ministry was held in Delhi while he was moving in a Bharat Sarkar vehicle. None of this is happenstance. An opaque working style centred around the cult of individual leaders, a petrified media, the demise of watchdog bodies and inaction by the law enforcement agencies have provided an ideal breeding ground for power peddlers of all kinds. Conmen are those who take – and offer nothing in return. If we’re lucky, they get caught and we get to read about them. But here’s the real scary thought: what if there are also authorised brokers out there holding court, with an actual line to top?P. Raman is a veteran journalist.
