Gunman of fictitious MLA cheats govt job aspirants

The lighter that he allegedly carried as a gun. 

A 30-year-old priest allegedly posed as the gunman of a fictitious MLA and cheated a man of money by promising him a government job.

Narayan Ramachandra Hegde, from Malalgaon near Sirsi, Uttar Kannada district, was arrested by Upparpet police at Majestic on Monday.

According to police, Hegde’s victim was a Davangere native named Venkatesh, 28, whom he had befriended on Facebook.

On the social networking site, Hegde shared many pictures of himself wearing safari suits (usually worn by armed security guards) and posing with official cars. He routinely carried a fake pistol — which was nothing but a lighter — to give the impression that he was a gunman, said Sanjeev M Patil, Deputy Commissioner of Police (West).

Hegde introduced himself as an armed reserve policeman tasked with guarding “Dharwad MLA Ramachandra Desai”. In reality, there’s no such MLA named Ramachandra Desai. The Dharwad legislator’s name is Amrut Desai.

Venkatesh didn’t check Hegde’s credentials and believed him. Hegde promised him a gardener’s job in the horticulture department if he paid him Rs 30,000.

On Monday, he met Venkatesh in Davangere near the office of the District Armed Reserve police. They partied and left for Bengaluru in the night. After reaching the city on Tuesday morning, Hegde took Rs 12,000 from Venkatesh and sent him to a hospital for a “medical test as part of the job interview”.

Venkatesh did as told. But when he came out of the hospital, there was no sight of Hegde and his phone was also switched off. Suspecting something fishy, he filed a complaint with the jurisdictional Upparpet police. Police inspector C B Shivaswamy acted swiftly and caught Hegde at Majestic. Police believe Hegde had cheated many others.