An impostor in the midst

The Royal Challengers Bangalore versus Rajasthan Royals match had a lot of games happening off the field too.

There was this young man, claiming to be the son of Home Minster R Ashoka, demanding tickets for himself and his friends. He managed to get the passes and wormed his way right into Vijay Mallya’s enclosure. 

According to eyewitnesses in the P2 stand, he moved around interacting with people. In high spirits, literally, he even misbehaved with a woman. All this drama went on, until a top cop spotted him and sniffed something wrong. 

The top cop knew R Ashoka’s son very well and he immediately directed his men to check him out and found out that this young man, who identified himself as Rakesh Gowda, was actually a fraudster who managed to con his way into top shows by getting passes and tickets.

All of 24 years, Rakesh has a history of conning people. He was even spotted at the David Guetta concert and at the IPL matches this season. According to witnesses, the boy always comes dressed in his best, flaunts loads of confidence and drops names wherever necessary. 

Additional commissioner of police (law and order) T Suneel Kumar informed that a criminal case would be booked against Rakesh for impersonation. “He will have to be interrogated to see if he has given us the real details. We need to check his background and he will be produced before the magistrate,” said Suneel.     

In the meantime, even as Rakesh was horsing around claiming to be Ashoka’s son, the minister’s real son, Ajay was seated in the KSCA’s VIP enclosure and watching the match. Ajay, an engineering student at RVCE, was quite disturbed by the development.

Though he didn’t oblige for a picture, he said, “I have heard of this person trying to impersonate me. It’s really funny and also embarrassing that people actually drop names just to get a ticket. I just hope such incidents don’t happen again.”