Cheat dupes hotel posing as tv anchor

A 23-year-old man was arrested after he used a fake email ID of a top televsion anchor to book himself into a south Delhi hotel, from where he slipped away three days later without settling the bill.

Prem Singh, resident of Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh, was arrested fowllowing a complaint made by India TV. He had booked a room at Solo Victoria Hotel in Greater Kailash-I, posing through the email as Rajat Sharma, chairman and editor-in-chief of the Hindi news channel.

And while checking in, he had produced a photocopy of a driving licence which too did not belong to him.

“Prem stayed at the hotel for three days and then slipped away,” said Ajay Chaudhry, additional commissioner of police (south east). A case of cheating and impersonation has been registered at Greater Kailash police station.

The driving license, which was photocopied, had been lost by its owner in Surat, police later found. Police had sent a team to Mumbai as the licence bore an address in that city.

The police followed a complicated trail to track Prem to Ghaziabad, where he was trying to settle down after his recent marriage and planned to open a shop selling mobile phones and SIM cards.

On interrogation, Prem told police that he had been changing homes, phones and phone numbers very frequently. Wherever he stayed, he duped somebody by posing either as a journalist or an  engineer with Delhi Metro.

“He had stayed in JJ Colony Shakurpur for a while in a rented room and had eloped with the daughter of the landlord. It was only after his arrest that his real identity was revealed. He was earlier using the assumed identity of Anup Chimnani. Even his wife did not know his true identity,” Chaudhry added.

Prem also told police that he had earlier cheated several people on the pretext of arranging a job for them in Delhi Metro.

 He came to Delhi in search of a job last year and had been employed as as a worker for a contractor with Delhi Metro. He has been sent to judicial custody, police said.