Fake judge, fake court: How Gujarat conman fooled people with land dispute cases

Ahmedabad Police on Monday arrested a 37-year-old man for running a fake tribunal and passing several orders of arbitration between 2019 and 2024.
The police said accused Morris Samuel Christian, a resident of Gandhinagar, passed an order in favour of his client in a case related to government land in 2019.
Ahmedabad police said the accused (Christian) had been booked for allegedly cheating people by posing as a judge of an arbitral tribunal, passing favourable orders claiming he has been appointed as an arbitrator by a competent court to adjudicate legal disputes, cheating, forgery, providing false information to government servants, among other charges.
The FIR was registered at Karanj police station in Ahmedabad based on a written complaint filed by Hardik Desai, a civil judge and currently the registrar of the Civil Court, Ahmedabad. Desai stated in the complaint that he filed the complaint on the instruction of JL Chovatia, judge of the city civil and sessions court, Ahmedabad.
According to the Ahmedabad police, Christian used to trap people whose land disputes were pending before the civil court. Police said he used to take a specific amount from his clients as fees for solving their cases.
The police said the accused would first establish himself as a court-appointed official arbitrator, call his clients at his Gandhinagar-based office, which was designed to look like a court and pass a favourable order as the tribunal’s presiding officer.
“He created an environment of a court by keeping staff, advocates and himself presided over as a judge,” PTI cited the FIR, adding that “he himself filed cases, passed orders and tried to make applicants owners of land worth in crores.”
The police said several photos of his “fake court” have been recovered, showing him sitting like a judge, giving the impression of a real courtroom.
Christian has been booked under Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) sections 170 (pretending to hold any office as a public servant) and 419 (cheating by personation), according to a release.
The fraud was unearthed during the proceeding of a civil application filed by one Babjuji Thakor claiming right over a parcel of government land in Paldi area.
Earlier this month, fraudsters precisely planned and executed a massive banking fraud, creating a fake branch of the government-run SBI, approximately 250 km from Chhattisgarh’s capital city Raipur, in a quiet village named Chhapora in the Sakti district.
The branch had brand-new furnishings, official documents, and operational bank counters – all the hallmarks of a true bank. Unaware of the scam, the locals started visiting the “bank” to open accounts and conduct transactions.