Bengaluru: Sirsi rural police in Karnataka’s Uttara Kannada district tracked down a man who cheated an unsuspecting student of Rs 200 nearly 35 years ago, promising job,The Indian Express reported.
Venkatesh Mahadeva Vaidya was just 20-year-old struggling student in 1990 when he forked out the money to the accused, B Keshavamurthy Rao for a government job.
Vaidya borrowed the money from a friend hoping to settle down but only to shockingly discover that Rao had vanished overnight.
Back then, Rs 200 was not a small amount when people like Vaidya pulled through a month earning half of it.
Vaidya, a B Com student doing odd jobs to support his education, met Rao the ‘influential’ person in February 1990.
‘My parents were labourers. BK Rao promised to get me a government job and demanded a bribe of Rs 200. That was big money then. His offer seemed promising. So I took a loan from an elderly person and paid Rao, Vaidya told The Indian Express.
Vaidya filed a case at the Sirsi rural police station, which turned out to be the station’s oldest pending case.
‘I cried because I lost such a huge amount of money,” he was quoted as saying, adding: ‘I then moved on in life’.
After B.Com, Vaidya became a staffer with the State Bank of India (SBI), before voluntarily retiring as a chief manager of an SBI branch in Bengaluru.
Years later a clever courier trick helped police finally catch Keshavamurthy Rao, who is now aged 72.
After taking charge two months ago, inspector Manjunath Gowda went through pending cases in the station when he came upon Vaidya’s complaint.
‘This was the oldest pending case of the station. I felt it was interesting as the case was filed over Rs 200,’ the officer reportedly said.
Manjunath Gowda found out that Rao lived in the town he had worked. The officer used his network ‘in Kundapura and found out that he had left the town more than two decades back’.
Police got Rao’s phone number and traced his location in Bengaluru where he was living alone, known as a Kannada activist.
Police in Sirsi could not travel 400 km to Bengaluru for Rs 200 case.
It was then an opportunity presented itself last week when police constable Maruti Gowd, who is a Kabbadi player, headed to city to attend a sports meet.
Inspector Gowda told him to look for Rao after the meet ended.
Maruti posing as a courier office employee called up Rao and asked him to ‘come to the courier office to collect a parcel. Once he arrived, I picked him up and brought to Sirsi.’
To his great surprise, Vaidya received a call from the police in the first week of July informing him of Rao’s arrest.
Vaidya had little hope that he would ever again set eyes on Rao, let alone having him arrested for cheating.
Appearing at the court last week, Rao apologized to Vaidya.
‘He is 72 years old now… Rs 200 was a lot of money then, but not now. On humanitarian grounds, I forgave him,’ Vaidya reportedly said.
Responding to Vaidya’s decision to withdraw the case the court ordered the closure of it.