Gujarat conman who set up bogus court, passed orders is arrested: Police

Police said Morris Samuel Christian, 37, was arrested following an investigation into a FIR registered by the city civil court registrar

AHMEDABAD: A 37-year-old man, who had been allegedly running a bogus arbitration tribunal in Gujarat five years ago, posed as its presiding officer and ruled in favour of people who paid him for a favourable outcome, was arrested on Monday, the Ahmedabad police said.

The FIR said the government property targeted through the fraudulent arbitration was a plot in Ahmedabad’s Paldi area. (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Police said Morris Samuel Christian, 37, a resident of Gandhinagar, was arrested following an investigation into a first information report (FIR) registered at Karanj police station in Ahmedabad on a complaint by Hardik Desai, the registrar of city civil court, Ahmedabad.

Desai, who filed the complaint on orders of JL Chovatia, judge city civil and sessions court, Ahmedabad, said Christian acted as an arbitrator of a tribunal operating out of Vasna.

In 2019, he passed a claim award against the government for a parcel of land in favour of his client, Chandaji Thakor. It was only when Christian’s order, which fraudulently sought to transfer government land to a private party, was submitted to the city civil court at Bhadra in Ahmedabad for execution that the authorities raised doubts about the document, leading to the police complaint.

Police said Christian targeted people whose cases of land disputes were pending before the city civil court and conned them into paying him a fee to resolve their cases. Christian would establish himself as a court-appointed official arbitrator and call these clients to his office in Gandhinagar’s Vasna, designed to look like a court.

Christian set up a “courtroom-like environment”, his accomplices posed as court staffers or lawyers, and he posed as a judge, and issued false arbitration orders, the FIR said. Through these fabricated proceedings, he prepared and settled claims that transferred valuable government land into private hands.

Investigators have yet to identify the cases where Christian’s fake tribunal allegedly issued fabricated awards and statements to create the appearance of legitimate conflict resolution, deceiving courts and other authorities into recognising his verdicts.

The FIR said the government property targeted through the fraudulent arbitration was a plot in Ahmedabad’s Paldi area.