An elderly citizen has been found contaminating his own food with lizards to get free meals from the Indian Railways, claims a report India Today.
70-year-old Surender Pal has been identified as the serial offender behind multiple cases of reported ‘food contamination’.
It has been found that the man did this in order to secure free meals from a couple of railway divisions, reports India Today.
Talking to PTI, Basant Kumar Sharma, Senior DCM, Jabalpur, said:
He was the same person. He claimed to have found a lizard in the samosa he ate at Jabalpur station on July 14. Then he complained that a lizard has been found in his biryani at Guntkal station. I became suspicious and alerted the senior DCM and shared the man’s photo. He turned out to be 70 plus and did it for free meals.
The Guntakal railway division had tweeted upon the conman’s arrest.
Guntakal Division
— DRM Guntakal (@drmgtl) July 23, 2019
In joint operation one conman was caught who was fleecing the Railway Caterers by claiming lizard in food. He confessed his crime. He did similar trick in Jabalpur Division. Please beware of such elements, who bring Railways in bad light.@SCRailwayIndia pic.twitter.com/pZCX8LfzUd
Pal later confessed he’s been doing this for quite some time and even recorded a video in which he allegedly used a fish that could cure mental illness to do his tricks.
I have done a wrong thing. I am an old man, I am mentally unstable, I have blood cancer. Please let me go. In Punjab there is an ayurvedic medicine. I used a fish which cures bone diseases and mental illness.
Pal claimed his father was earlier a senior DCM in the Indian Railways, to which officials said it was not right for him to befool the railways, which was like his family.