The runaway train of crime in India
₹20,000. As it turned out “Sachin Agarwal" was not just any old fellow. He contained multitudes.
Many people lost money to “Sachin Agarwal" while trying desperately to help their loved ones. Among them was journalist Nidhi Suresh who filed an FIR in Delhi, determined to get justice for everyone who had been scammed. Suresh later wrote, that two weeks after that FIR, “the Delhi police arrested four men from Bihar—apparently part of a larger group of people—who reportedly confessed to scamming more than 300 people for over ₹1.25 crore".
I gleefully told this rare story of comeuppance to a friend who looked jittery. With some hesitation she told me that her brother had earlier been involved with the oxygen scam gang. Back when they were a mobile phone scam gang, she said.
Being an extremely determined older sister, she had redirected her unemployed younger brother into a completely different life. Also read: Heatwaves are a sneak peak into a future of climate breakdown I was stunned—less about the family connection and more about the nature of organised crime. It was an epiphany for me—obvious for other people, I am sure— this idea of the free-floating, generalist criminal adapting his skills and schemes to the zeitgeist aka whatever is trending.
Why have those dark, teeth-gritting days of wanting Sachin Agarwal to drop dead returned to me lately? It’s hard not to! Not when we are left to weep over the results of large-scale crimes when they could have been prevented back when they were a cottage industry crime. Or let’s be honest, perhaps we would not have to deal with the second round of large-scale crime if even the first round of large-scale crime was prosecuted. If Kannada film star Darshan had been punished for his
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