In India, a fake police station worked for 8 months

ORDO News EditorAugust 24, 2022 11:47 AM UTCLast Updated: August 24, 2022 11:47 AM UTC

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(ORDO NEWS) — In the Indian state of Bihar, criminals somehow ran a fake police station for eight months before being caught by the real police.

Cases of scammers impersonating police officers and soldiers are not uncommon in India, because the country has fear and respect for people in uniform.

However, a gang in Banka, Bihar, took the scam to a whole new level by setting up a fake police station just 500 meters from the real police station.

Apparently, the scammers ran their fake precinct from a local hotel, where they posed as real officers dressed in realistic uniforms and even carried firearms.

They reportedly swindled hundreds of people into extorting bribes to file complaints, thus helping them get social housing or police work, or otherwise solving their problems.

“We have heard about fake police officers or investigators in the country, but this is the first time we hear about a fake police station,” one of the real police officers told reporters.

To make their police station look legitimate, the gang allegedly paid people from the countryside around Rs 500 a day ($6.25) to pretend they were working at the station.

All this was convincing enough that for eight months no one filed a complaint against them.

The gang’s audacious scam was exposed when Yadav, head of the real police station at Shambhu Bank, accidentally spotted two fake officers as they were returning to the fake headquarters.

He had previously seen them harassing shopkeepers in a shopping center under construction.

Yadav became suspicious after noticing that the fake cops were carrying fake firearms. When they were asked where they were based, the two “colleagues” could not give an exact answer, so he took them both to his real station.

Ultimately, the bogus officers led Shambha Yadav and his team to the hotel police station, where three more accomplices were detained.

Interestingly, everyone denies any wrongdoing and claims that they thought they were working for the real police… The sixth member of the gang, who is considered the leader, is still at large.