The words Rishabh Pant, con and crores of money being duped out of the crickterer have been going around, but not everyone seems to know what happened.
Apparently, an ex-cricketer who turned out to be a conman has been going around not only pretending to be an IPS officer but using that to stay at luxury hotels and scammed the star crickter out of more than Rs. 1.63 crore. He has finally though been caught and arrested at the Delhi Airport.
Who Is This Conman?
The person is said to be Mrinank Singh, as per reports, a 25-year-old former cricketer. According to Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Ravikant Kumar, Singh hailing from Faridabad in Haryana, was once part of the Under-19 cricket team of the state, and even claims that he was part of the Mumbai Indians team in the IPL.
His case came to light when the Taj Palace Hotel filed a complaint in August of last year at the Chanakyapuri Police Station in Delhi claiming that someone called Mrinank Singh had stayed in there for a week, called him as a cricketer and left without paying his bill of Rs. 5,53,362.
As stated by Kumar, “In July 2022, he went to the Taj Palace and told them he was a celebrated cricketer and had played in the IPL. He stayed there for almost a week and his bill was around Rs 5.6 lakh. He left the hotel saying his sponsor, Adidas, would foot the bill. However, the bank account numbers and card details provided by him turned out to be fake.”
Rishabh Pant, the Delhi Capitals (DC) skipper was also one of the people that Singh duped in a big way in 2021.
Pant’s lawyer, Eklavya Dwivedi, revealed in a 2022 interview with Sports Tak that Mrinank, who knew Pant from a zonal cricket academy, that he was starting a business of luxury items and could get items like luxury watches for the cricketer at “reasonable rates”.
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Not only this, but Pant also gave him some jewellery and expensive watches that Singh claimed he could sell at high profit along with money transfer into Singh’s account to get those items.
Pant sent a legal notice to Mrinank when he was not able to get the items and in a settlement reached an amount of Rs. 163 crore that Pant was owed. Although Mrinank issued a cheque of the same, however, when Pant tried to cash it, the cheque bounced due to insufficient balance in the accused’s account.
The police officer further stated “When the hotel staff asked for payment, he said his company, Adidas, would make it. He was contacted several times to clear the outstanding payments, but each time he made false statements and promises and always provided incorrect information.”
While investigating further into the person, the police found this is not the first time Singh had done this and that he would also use another identity that of an IPS officer. An officer revealed “At a few hotels, he would pose as a senior police officer from Karnataka while at others, he would say he’s a successful cricketer. He was very active on social media and would post selfies with women to show he was famous and had multiple fans.”
Based on this information, the police filed a case of cheating and Singh was sent a notice under section 41A of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) but he was not found there.
The officers spoke to his father and said “His father informed the police that they had evicted and disowned their son from their properties as they do not have any control over his actions.”
The police also found it difficult to trace Singh since he kept changing his location, would his phone switched off to avoid detection, and even made his friends believe that he was in Dubai. Soon the court issued a non-bailable warrant and a lookout circular against Singh and on 25th December he was detained at the IGI Airport in Delhi by Immigration officers.
Officer Kumar stated “On Monday, while he was trying to catch a flight to Hong Kong, immigration officials detained him and handed him to us.”
Even during his detention, Singh tried to escape by posing as Alok Kumar IPS, Additional Director General of Police (ADGP), Karnataka and calling up senior officials to help his son Mrinank Singh who was being “illegally detained” at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport.
During interrogation, Mrinank again tried to mislead the police by claiming that his ‘father’ Ashok Kumar Singh was part of the Indian cricket team from the 1980s to 90s and that he was currently a manager at the Air India working at the posted at IGI Airport.
It is not yet clear the exact amount that Singh has scammed out of people and businesses, but reports estimate it be among the millions
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Feature image designed by Saudamini Seth
Sources: India Today, Business Standard, The Indian Express
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