The Curious Case of a Fake Cop

How a conman posed as an IPS officer in Maharashtra for six months

MUMBAI ~ About a month ago, Sangramsinh Nishandar, a senior police official in Virar, a distant suburb in Thane, met a confident young police officer, Hemant Patil, at an Iftar party. The man who introduced the two told Nishandar that Patil, who was dressed in plain clothes, was a bright young IPS officer from Virar. But Nishandar felt something was amiss.

Patil told Nishandar that he was stationed in Maharashtra’s Gondia district in a subdivision called Gondal. That’s when Nishandar realised that Patil was a fraud. Nishandar had been stationed in Gondia for over three years in the past and knew there was no subdivision called Gondal there.

A few weeks ago, Nishandar made a plan to arrest Patil. “We wanted to catch him red-handed, wearing a policeman’s clothes. So I got one of my officers to invite him to a function to distribute free notebooks to disadvantaged children,” Nishandar says. When he appeared dressed as a police officer on the appointed date, 5 September, he was arrested.

Upon questioning him, the policemen realised that Patil had posed as an IPS officer for over six months. During this period, he had attended functions as a guest, given a speech to students of a local school, and once even attended a function organised by the Vasai-Virar Municipal Corporation as a guest, along with Vasai’s Mayor, Narayan Mankar. He had a number of police uniforms and a vehicle with the ‘police’ sign on its windscreen.

Patil, it turned out, was an unemployed 35-year-old from Virar. “He is tall, well-built and has a moustache, and carries himself confidently. No one suspected he was taking them for a ride,” Nishandar says. “People would speak courteously with him, toll nakas would not charge money, and policemen would salute him whenever they saw him. He said this gave him a high. So he continued to fool people.”

The police are exploring if he tried to extort money from anyone, though there doesn’t seem to be any sign of it so far. They are also trying to locate the tailor who stitched Patil’s fake uniforms.