One held for trying to sell brass as Mughal-era gold

The police said that the suspect, identified as Ishak, of Jimrawat, is a member of the Tatlu gang and he had conned over 30 people over the past two years by selling them brass bricks

The Faridabad police arrested a Palwal resident for allegedly conning people from other states on the pretext of selling them gold bricks from the Mughal era that were excavated in Jimrawat village of Palwal.

The brick recovered from the suspect’s possession.

The police said that the suspect, identified as Ishak, of Jimrawat, is a member of the Tatlu gang and he had conned over 30 people over the past two years by selling them brass bricks.

The police zeroed in on Ishak following a complaint from a Delhi resident who said that he was getting frequent calls about a 200-year-old gold brick. The complainant, identified as Anuj Kumar, a resident of Badarpur in Delhi, who works in Ballabgarh, approached the police suspecting it to be a fraud.

OP Singh, the Faridabad commissioner of police, said that Kumar decided to meet the suspect and alerted the police in advance. “He asked the suspect to meet him at the Ballabhgarh Metro station and assured him of purchasing the gold brick, telling him that his mother was keen on getting ornaments made,” he said.

Singh said that Kumar met the suspect at the gate, where police were already deployed in plainclothes. “The suspect started narrating a story, telling Kumar that his brother is a JCB machine driver in a remote area of Palwal and had found the brick while digging. He said that his brother hid it in his pocket and they were selling it as they were facing a financial crisis,” he said.

However, when Kumar refused and alleged he was trying to con him, the suspect fled. The police caught hold of him and recovered a gold-coloured brick that was found to be made of brass.

A case under sections 34 (common intention), 420 (cheating) and 511 (committing offences punishable with imprisonment for life or other imprisonment) of the Indian Penal Code was registered at Ballabhgarh police station.

The police said that the suspect cheated people from Bihar, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, and Odisha, and revealed the names of three associates.