Fake IPL Cricketer’s Con Game Busted, Taj Palace Hotel, Rishabh Pant Among Victims

New Delhi: A 25-year-old youth, who had played under-19 cricket for Haryana and claimed to have represented Mumbai Indians in the Indian Premier League (IPL), was arrested on Monday for cheating the Taj Palace Hotel in Delhi of over Rs 5 lakhs in July 2022, a Delhi Police official said on Wednesday. The accused, identified as Mrinank Singh, a resident of Faridabad in Haryana, had also duped cricketer Rishabh Pant and several luxury hotels owners and managers across India by impersonating a senior IPS officer of Karnataka, the official said.

Singh was nabbed at the IGI Airport by immigration officials while he was trying to fly to Hong Kong. He had a look out-circular (LOC) issued against him by the local court after a non-bailable warrant was issued in his name.

Singh’s arrest followed a complaint by the Director of Security, Taj Palace Hotel at the Chanakyapuri police station last August, alleging that Singh had stayed in the hotel from July 22-29, 2022, posing as a cricketer, and left without paying bills of Rs 5,53,362.

When asked for the payment, he had said that his company Adidas would do it and had even shared a fake UTR number of online transaction of Rs two lakh. However, when the hotel checked the system, they found that no payment was made by him, Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police, New Delhi, Ravi Kant Kumar said.

Singh and his manager, Gagan Singh, were contacted several times on their mobiles for payment but they made false statements and promises and provided wrong information, Kumar said.

During investigation, the police sent a notice to Singh’s address but he was not found there. He had switched off his mobile phone and was communicating through social media platforms or internet chatting applications. He had also misled his acquaintances that he was not in India and had settled in Dubai, Kumar said.

During his detention at the airport, Singh tried to influence the immigration officials by making a phone call to senior police officials, posing as Karnataka ADGP Alok Kumar, and seeking assistance for his son, who had been illegally detained at the airport, Kumar said.

On interrogation, he tried to mislead the police, claiming that his father Ashok Kumar Singh, who had been an international cricket player for India in 1980s to late 1990s, was working as a manager in Air India and posted at the airport, Kumar said.

Singh also confessed that he had cheated multiple luxury resorts/hotels of lakhs of rupees by citing himself as ADGP, Karnataka and using his stardom as IPL cricketer to influence them and stay for multiple days and leave without clearing their dues on the false promise of paying them later, Kumar said.

“From the prima facie analysis of his mobile phone, it was revealed that there are multiple victims of his fraud and impersonation and duped amount runs into several lakhs of rupees. His victims include hotels, bars, restaurants, girls, cab drivers, small eating outlets among others,” the Additional CP said.

He also said that Pant was conned by him to the tune of Rs 1.63 crores in 2020-2021. He said that his mobile phone contained multiple videos and photographs of his acquaintance with young female models/girls, some of them highly objectionable.