A 25-year-old man was arrested after he cheated cricketer Rishabh Pant of Rs 1.63 crore and Taj Hotels of Rs 5.5 lakh , respectively between 2020 and 2022, an India Today report said.
Mrinank Singh, who played Under-19 cricket for Haryana, was arrested by the Delhi Police on Monday.
Pant lost Rs 1.63 crore between 2020-2021 and in 2022, his lawyer Eklavya Dwivedi had told in an interview to Sports Tak that the wicketkeeper-batter had started a new business that dealt with luxury products, which he could buy at a reasonable price.
The cricketer transferred an undisclosed sum of money to Singh to buy expensive watches and also offered him jewellery. However, Singh informed Pant that he could not get those products, following which Pant issued a legal notice and asked him to pay Rs 1.63 crore.
Singh gave Pant a cheque of Rs 1.63 crore but when the cricketer tried to withdraw the amount, the cheque bounced because of insufficient funds.
In July 2022, Singh stayed at the Taj Hotel for a week and left without paying a bill that amounted to Rs 5.53 lakh. When asked to pay the bill, Singh said that Adidas, who he claimed were his sponsors, would make the payment.
The hotel staff shared the bank details with him and he shared a transaction ID with the hotel, stating that a payment of Rs 2 lakh had been done. The hotel, however, failed to find the transaction in their system.
Singh and his manager Gagan Singh were contacted by phone and he informed the staff at Taj Hotel that he would send his driver with the money to pay the remaining amount.
Singh continued to make false promises and did not pay them the money, following which a complaint was filed against him.
On Monday, Singh was arrested at the Delhi airport by immigration officials while on his way to Hong Kong. He tried to escape by posing as senior Karnataka police officer Alok Kumar and sought their help, but the immigration authorities handed him over to the Delhi police.
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