A complaint was filed by the registrar of the city civil court at the Karanj police station, exposing Christian’s operation. The investigation revealed that he targeted people with pending land disputes, charging them a fee to “resolve” their cases.
Ahmedabad: On Monday (Oct 21): A man in Gujarat was arrested for setting up a fake tribunal and impersonating a judge to pass bogus orders from his office in Gandhinagar.
BRIEF FACTS
The accused, Morris Samuel Christian, allegedly operated the fraudulent court for at least five years. In 2019, he issued a fake order favoring a client in a government land dispute, police said.
Ahmedabad city police arrested Christian for deceiving people by posing as an arbitrator appointed by a court to resolve legal disputes.
According to an official statement, he has been booked under sections 170 (impersonating a public servant) and 419 (cheating by personation) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
A complaint was filed by the registrar of the city civil court at the Karanj police station, exposing Christian’s operation. The investigation revealed that he targeted people with pending land disputes, charging them a fee to “resolve” their cases.
Christian would present himself as a court-appointed arbitrator, conducting sham legal proceedings in his office designed to resemble a courtroom. He employed accomplices posing as court staff and lawyers to enhance the illusion of authenticity, police said.
In 2019, Christian passed a fraudulent order in favor of a client who was contesting ownership of government land under the district collector’s jurisdiction. The client sought to have his name added to the property’s revenue records in Paldi.
Despite lacking any official authorization or appointment under the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, Christian claimed he had been named an “official arbitrator” by the government. Using this pretext, he issued a bogus order directing the district collector to include his client’s name in the revenue records.
To enforce the fake order, Christian filed an appeal through another lawyer at the city civil court, attaching his fraudulent ruling. However, the court registrar, Hardik Desai, discovered that neither Christian nor his tribunal had legal standing, leading to the complaint that triggered the police action.
Christian, already facing a prior cheating complaint lodged at Maninagar police station in 2015, was arrested following the registrar’s complaint. An FIR has been registered, and further investigation is underway.
