BENGALURU: Conman Sukesh Chandrashekar, who has made serious bribery allegations against former Delhi minister Satyender Jain, was first arrested by Assistant Commissioner of Police M Babu in Bengaluru 14 years ago.
Like Madhukar Zende, who caught the infamous criminal Charles Sobhraj, Babu too has entered criminal history books being the first to incarcerate Sukesh, who has fine tuned his criminal craft from his initial days of hoodwinking and impersonation.
Babu recalled that Sukesh, who is now in Tihar Jail for cheating a businessman of Rs 200 crore, had swindled even tough and no-nonsense policemen of the Hulimavu police station all those years ago. He collected money from constables and head constables and duped them. The policemen complained to their higher-ups only much later, he said.
Later, Sukesh had cheated a sitting minister in Tamil Nadu of Rs 10 lakh and a high-end car saying that he was the “illegitimate” son of a former chief minister of Karnataka. Babu recalled how Sukesh moved around in his victims’ cars with beacons, claiming himself to be a VVIP.
Policemen had told Babu that they would snap into attention and throw a crisp salute as the car would pass by thinking that it was the VIP’s son inside the vehicle. Sukesh had even convinced the wife of a then-budding politician, who went on to become an MP, to buy him a Maruti Zen car.
When he was finally caught, Sukesh confessed to both these crimes. Even 14 years ago, Sukesh had six cars, some of them top end, and the police recovered all of them.
CBI lists 70 cases against Sukesh
Now that he has been arrested yet again, the Central Bureau of Investigation has drawn up a long list of 70 cases against the criminal. Some of them include Sukesh impersonating as an IAS officer and as a grandson of a former chief minister of Tamil Nadu. Babu, who spent hours questioning the conman, said Sukesh is as crooked as Charles Sobhraj and is the “wiliest cheat” he has encountered.
“He tried to cheat me with a bunch of juicy lies and offers. Sukesh knows the law fairly well and uses the loopholes to devastating effect,” he added. Some police officers said that cheating is not considered a serious offence and draws lesser punishment, as compared to, say, a murder, but can have a horrendous effect on victims.