Weekend Wild Card: What Harshvardhan Jain's Ghaziabad Fake Embassy tells us about ourselves

Weekend Wild Card

Harshvardhan Jain ran fake embassies out of a Ghaziabad bungalow—complete with forged diplomatic plates, morphed photos with world leaders, and Rs 44.7 lakh in cash. Styling himself as "Baron Jain," he claimed to represent three micronations—Westarctica, Seborga, Lodonia—and the entirely fictional Poulvia.

He allegedly promised overseas jobs, visas, and diplomatic privileges to the gullible, and hawala services to others. And he did this for years—some reports say seven years, some say ten. It’s a monument to our institutional incompetence, public gullibility, and bureaucratic blindness. The real stars of this story aren't Jain and his fake embassy—they're the officials, authorities, and institutions that looked the other way for the better part of a decade.

What on earth were the police smoking? Did no one Google Westarctica—or pause at the name Poulvia, which sounds like a poultry brand? The man turned Ghaziabad into a United Nations Headquarters, and nobody noticed. Neighbours probably boasted of the foreign dignitary next door raising their real estate value, while traffic cops deferred to his fake plates, lest they trigger an international crisis. The Ghaziabad administration may have been lulled into complacency by the Ambassador Himself coming to file all official documents, complete with micronational seals. The External Affairs Ministry was too busy managing relations with actual countries to worry about fictional ones. “Frankly, his embassy caused fewer problems than most real ones," a diplomat is supposed to have said. After all, posturing, paperwork, photo-ops, invented titles—it's not too far from what real diplomats do. A guy who claimed to be a local cop said, ‘There were no bodies, no drugs, no political controversy. Someone feels like flying a flag, what’s there to investigate? As long as it’s not a Pakistani flag.’

The curious thing is that, did none of the people who got scammed complain? Were all those businessmen who dealt with Jain's "embassy" really dupes, or willing participants in an innovative money-laundering scheme? When someone approaches you claiming to represent the "Grand Duchy of Westarctica" and offers business opportunities, there are only two explanations for saying yes: you're either spectacularly naive or spectacularly complicit. One suspects the latter might be the case.

The truth is, we revere the trappings of power so blindly that a car with diplomatic plates or a LinkedIn bio saying “Ambassador Extraordinary, Westarctica” is proof enough. We've become so accustomed to kowtowing to authority that we've forgotten to verify if the authority actually exists. If something looks official, stamped, and laminated, most people won't question it.

The irony becomes clear when you consider what legitimate businesses endure in this country. Want to open a bank account? Prepare for a documentary odyssey involving Aadhaar cards, PAN cards, address proofs, photographs, and forms in triplicate. Planning to start a company? Brace yourself for GST registrations, ROC filings, environmental clearances, fire safety certificates. Yet the same system that demands six proofs of identity to get a mobile SIM card gave diplomatic immunity to a man whose biggest credential was owning a colour printer and having decent Photoshop skills.
But perhaps Jain was merely emulating our zeitgeist. After all, we inhabit a post-truth world, where crypto influencers sell digital monkeys, where deepfakes fool experts, where "alternate facts" compete with reality, and where viral misinformation travels faster than truth. Donald Trump, when he hears about Jain’s achievements, would probably say, “Harshvardhan? Genius. Westarctica? Great name. Cold, strong. Way better than the Democrats’ Eastboringland. He could be our ambassador to Greenland—we’re buying that next.”

Sure, Harshvardhan was a small-time con artist---a microcon artist if you will. He will get what is coming to him. But we mustn’t miss the grand, theatrical absurdity of it all. He created his own surrealist masterpiece. Jain's con was the ultimate performance, a middle finger to a reality that's already half-fake.

Even in his undoing, think what he taught us: We will never look at diplomatic licence plates the same way again.

So here’s to Harshvardhan Jain, the Post-Truth Baron. In an era where deepfakes win elections, influencers invent themselves, and credentials are just a blue tick away, who’s to say he didn’t simply echo the spirit of the age?

He may have misrepresented a country. But he perfectly represents our times. May his next adventure be less illegal, but just as gloriously absurd.