Fixers ,Tricksters , Con Men Or Scapegoats ?

 BY R.K. MISRA

He was a waiter in a restaurant in Ahmedabad not too long ago, stated a media report. Another claimed he was a security guard in Gujarat. A third informed that he actually worked as a driver in the Prime Minister’s home state. But all three agreed that his fortune looked up after the daughter of his employer fell in love with him and persuaded her prosperous family to allow the couple to get married.

The fairy tale marriage could have run its course and the couple lived happily ever after till Uttar Pradesh police played spoilsport last month and arrested Sanjay Rai alias Sanjay Sherpuria when he was travelling from New Delhi to Ghazipur.

The FIR accused him of defrauding businessmen and bureaucrats by faking his proximity to the Prime Minister, union ministers and other luminaries in the BJP and RSS.

Photographs he posted on his social media pages did not look like fakes though. In one he is seen welcoming Prime Minister Narendra Modi on an airfield. In another he is seen sitting with the PM and six other men huddled together in some serious discussion. In a third photograph he is on the dais with the PM.There are photographs of him with the RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, with BJP President J.P. Nadda and with the I &B  minister Anurag Singh Thakur, who he described as a close friend (Param Mitra).

While he did not own a bungalow yet in the national capital, having rented the front portion of a large house housing the Delhi Riding Club and lavishly furnishing it, he did get the membership of Delhi Gymkhana Club, which is said to have a 20-year waiting list.

Curiously, an Indian Express report claims that he is not even a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party. The normally garrulous party and its IT Cell have not bothered to call out Sherpuria or describe the photographs as fake, possibly because they are genuine. Sherpuria does seem to have enjoyed easy access to and proximity with RSS and BJP’s who’s who. The PMO, IB and the NSG would have given him high-level clearance toallow him to go anywhere near the Prime Minister.

Didn’t Intelligence agencies, which the Special Task Force of Uttar Pradesh Police claims alerted them to the fraud, alert the PMO? It seems improbable that the agencies were not aware that Rai’s wi-fi network’s password was ‘PMO’, that he had rented a bungalow on Lodhi Road in New Delhi but mentioned the address as ‘Race Course Road’ or that he had hired a PR agency to create multiple fan pages on social media. Nor would the social media posts have escaped the agencies. So, who vetted a con man to get access to the PM?

While UP Police accuses him of having floated 56 shell companies to facilitate money laundering, the mighty Enforcement Directorate (ED) appears to have missed his shenanigans till now. While the companies are now ‘under investigation’, the ED, which often leaks details and allegations during its investigation, has been tight-lipped in this case. What appears to have triggered his arrest though is the allegation that he extorted Rupees six crore as donation to his

NGO from industrialist Gaurav Dalmia. Police sources have claimed that Dalmia was being investigated by one of the central agencies and Sherpuria had offered to settle the case by

using his access and clout with top politicians and bureaucrats. The Dalmia Family Trust has been quick to deny the allegation, merely stating that the donation was part of its expenses related to CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility).

Even more curiously, the con man’s companies in Gujarat had run into trouble by 2015 and blacklisted. Kandla Energy and Chemicals Ltd (KECL) set up in 2005 defaulted on a State Bankof India (SBI) loan of Rs 171.85 crore in January 2013. It was classified as NPA in July 2014 and referred to the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT). SBI had declared the company as a wilful defaulter and put the firm’s dues owed to it at Rs 349.12 crores as on December 31, 2022. Several other companies promoted by Sherpuria in Gujarat turned turtle before he shifted his base to New Delhi. But he continued to operate with impunity. He would invite politicians and bureaucrats to attend religious ceremonies and ‘Pooja’ at home; he would get books allegedly authored by him—among them titles such as ‘I am Madhobhai: A Pakistani Hindu’, ‘Hindu Dharma Ki Dharohar’, ‘Karahta Bangal’—on water conservation and education –released by prominent politicians, among them Mohan Bhagwat. He ‘wrote’ regularly for prominent Hindi newspapers and sold his exorbitantly priced books to bureaucrats, businessmen and favour-seekers. Forbes India published a glowing report on his NGO’s work inGhazipur and especially for setting up a ‘lakdi (firewood) bank’ to help the poor cremate family members who died in the second wave of the pandemic. TV channels were also not far behind in promoting him.

While the State Bank of India had declared him a ‘wilful defaulter’, he had no difficulty in securing a ‘subsidy’ or grant of Rupees two crore in December, 2022 from the ministry of fisheries, animal husbandry and dairy which has Parshottam Rupala from Gujarat as minister. Not surprisingly, Sherpuria had posted photographs of the two of them (Rupala and Rai) listening to the Prime Minister’s Mann Ki Baat.

The STF told a court in UP that Sherpuria had confessed tocollecting large amounts of money for acting as a trouble shooter, for interceding on behalf of businessmen and bureaucrats and for fixing transfers and postings. The court was also told that the accused had admitted to a diary that he maintained at his in-law’s house in Gujarat, in which the names and the amounts were recorded in coded language. He alone would be able to decipher the code, the STF claimed, and sought a transit remand to take him to Gujarat.

His nephew and close associate Pradeep Kumar Rai figured in the CBI’s list of ‘undesirable contact’ list, retired CBI officers, but a number of IAS officers and IPS officers agreed to serve as members of the advisory board of the NGO he had floated in 2019.

 Patel in fact claimed to be an Additional Director in the PM’s Office, produced fake identification and secured accommodation and Z plus security in Jammu and Kashmir. It was an audacious thing to do in the union territory crawling with security and intelligence agencies. But he pulled off the act by dropping names and with a swagger.

An impersonator breaching high security in the UT is the stuff of a national nightmare and most observers believe it was simply not possible to pull it off without the complicity of people in high positions. But following his arrest during his third visit to the valley and the initial burst of information, nothing is known about the investigation so far. Patel has been brought back to Gujarat to face other cases. It was his over confidence that appears to have done him in as Patel reportedly threatened officers with transfer for failing to respond to his ‘summons’ He was arrested on March 3 but the matter remained under wraps until he was produced in court and sent to judicial custody. Police said there were three others with him but mysteriously they managed to escape. Two of them, Amit Pandya and Jay Sitapara, were later arrested in Gujarat. Pandya’s father worked at the Gujarat Chief Minister’s Office (CMO) and has since put in his papers. A probe is on, says the government.

As in the case of Sherpuria, Patel too had a history and should not have passed the smell test. There were at least three cases of cheating pending against him in Gujarat, the earliest dating back to 2017, when he first claimed that he was a part of the PMO.

Claiming to possess a host of degrees including a Ph.D. from a US University, bulk of them fake, Patel attended meetings for BJP workers, would often be seen at the BJP headquarters and the secretariat and even organised a conference that he passedoff as preparatory to the G-20 summit. Like Sherpuria, he too offered to fix investigations, arrange desired postings and presumably secure contracts. He is said to have promised a judicial officer in UP a posting in the Supreme Court in return of considerations.

While both the cases remain an enigma and a challenge to the security establishment and intelligence agencies, conspiracy theories and speculation about different arms of the government working at cross purposes have gained a fresh lease of life.

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