He had been conning his way into the lap of luxury for more than a decade before reality finally caught up with him.
A 31-year-old man hailing from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, who used to pose as a bureaucratic aide to weasel his way into high-end hotel suites, was arrested
for splurging at six five star hotels in the city before making a quiet exit on Wednesday.
"Sarthak Rao Babras from Port Blair is a conman who used to stay in five star hotels across various metropolitan cities, after checking-in on the pretext of a guest of a Delhi-based senior bureaucrat and duping various such establishments across the country for over 10 years," said Chhaya Sharma, DCP (south).
Police said Babras was nabbed while enquiring into a complaint made by the management of Sheraton Hotel alleging that he had checked-in on January 15 on the basis of a recommendation of a senior bureaucrat.
"He duped the management into believing that the bureaucrat will be making payments for his stay upon his return to Delhi in a couple of days," said a senior police officer.
Babras had provided a copy of his PAN card as his photo ID for the stay before availing the hotel's taxi service to drop him at Nehru Place on January 16.
"On his way, he had even taken a personal loan of R2,000 from the cab driver who reported this to the hotel manager prompting him to look up his profile. An internet search revealed that Babras had been arrested in Ahmedabad for duping a hotel," the officer said.
Police said Babras was nabbed minutes before he could check into another five star hotel in Connaught Place.
"During interrogation, he said his stay in Mumbai and Gujarat while on business trips had given him the idea of duping hotels to live a lavish life. Two mobile phones and swipe keys of rooms from seven five star hotels located across the country have been recovered from him," DCP Sharma added.