Varanasi boy prerhaps the youngest trickster of India

Inspired by Hindi flicks, Hera Pheri and Phir Hera Pheri, a boy, 14, here has turned perhaps the youngest trickster of India, coning job-seekers to net over Rs 2 lakh, before landing in police net.

Ram Lakhan Benwanshi, a Class VII dropout from Sarainandan locality of the city, was nabbed by cops of Lanka Police Station for allegedly running a fake-government recruitment racket for more than 10 months and earning over Rs 2 lakh.

Cash totalling Rs 9,800, a khukhri (Nepali dagger), pen drive containing government department logos, army and police dresses, besides badges of men in khakhi as also fake government recruitment forms and appointment letters have been seized from the boy's home.

Station Officer (Lanka Police Station) RS Verma told HT that a case was being registered against Ram Lakhan and investigations are also underway to ascertain the role of his jobless father, who has been detained for questioning.

Ram Lakhan, who had dropped out from a government school in 2007, started a fake recruitment racket in January 2009 and conned over 20 jobless people in the name of securing them jobs.

Turning a different individual every day, Ram Lakhan wore different dresses, spanning from an NCC fatigue one day to police trainee fatigue the other day, to dupe job-seekers, from whom he charged sums ranging between Rs 5,000 and Rs 20,000 per job and even issued fake appointment letters as well as computerised certificates and payment order forms of nationalised banks to streamline his credentials of a job giver.

But one of his appointment letters issued to a youth for a job in the NCC office in BHU, ultimately landed the teenaged trickster in the police net.