Chennai becomes a city of fakes

Chennai these days is throwing up one fake after another, or rather, bunches of them-fake doctors, spurious drugs, fake godmen, bogus marksheets, counterfeit currency and now even fake police stations and fake judges. The city seems to be teeming with fraudsters. And the police, in their own sweet world that begins and ends with VVIP security and spying on politicians, is unable to keep pace with the increasing number of these fakes and their ingenious methods.

Two recent episodes not only made it to the front pages of newspapers and grabbed lead treatment on TV news channels, but also drove home the truth that fraudsters are thriving while the gullible public are queuing up in greater numbers begging to become victims and the police is content merely responding.

A millionaire realtor was taken into custody after he sold a part of Bay of Bengal to the Indian Oil Corporation and a few days later, the cops got a shocker, detecting a parallel justice system in Chennai and suburbs. Realtor Devadasa Reddy of Minjur, a northern suburb of Chennai, had begun life as a helper in a ration shop 15 years ago and made millions by selling real estate through forged documents. His BMW car is estimated to cost over Rs 80 lakh and the 10,500 sq ft bungalow has a swimming pool and frills that would make a king blush. While Reddy is being grilled, a woman accomplice Saraswati who allegedly signed many of those fraudulent land documents is absconding. “We will get her soon,” said DSP Rangarajan. But the point is that the police remained clueless about Reddy’s operations until the IOC discovered that a chunk of the 106 acres it ‘bought’ from the realtor was in the sea.

Yet another disturbing news is that already, several powerful persons have started telling the investigating officers to go slow on the Reddy case. “Our criminal jurisprudence has become very ineffective,” said Justice K. P. Sivasubramanian. “Unless we speed up the cases and deliver stringent punishment to those found guilty, we will not be able to correct the system,” said the former judge of the Madras HC when asked to comment on the rising number of frauds.

Source: http://www.deccanchronicle.com/chennai/city-fakes-640