Caught: This 70-YO Man Has Been Putting Lizards In His Food To Get Free Meals From Indian Railways
70-year-old man contaminates his own food with dead lizard so he could get free meals from Indian Railways. Surender Pal has attempted this same stunt on several occasions before getting caught. Pal was caught red-handed at Guntkal station after which he confessed and even recorded a video in which he said he was using a fish which cured mental illness for his tricks.
When it comes to getting freebies, some people have no qualms letting go of their self respect, even if it means getting caught and shamed by millions.
That¡¯s the risk this 70-year-old man took by contaminating his own food with dead lizard so he could get free meals from Indian Railways. Apparently, this senior citizen named Surender Pal, has attempted this same stunt on several occasions before getting caught.
Twitter/DMR Guntakal
According to PTI, a senior divisional commercial manager was the first one to smell something fishy in the repeated complaint of dead lizards from the same individual. The officer then alerted the Indian Railways official after seeing the man¡¯s trick to avail free food.
"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," Basant Kumar Sharma, Senior DCM, Jabalpur, told PTI on phone.
According to reports, Surender Pal was caught red-handed at Guntkal station after which he confessed and even recorded a video in which he said he was using a "fish which cured mental illness" for his tricks.
Guntakal Division
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
¡ª DRM Guntakal (@drmgtl) 23 July 2019
"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," he is heard saying in the video, when officials asked him what he put in his food.
While the officials reprimanded him for tainting Indian Railway's name, they did not punish him harshly.
Pal also claimed that his father was a senior DCM, to which officials said it was not right for him to fraud the railways which was like his family.
It was not clear whether Pal was mentally unstable as he claimed or if he really had "blood cancer", but railway officials across the network are sure to remember him for his ingenuity, officials said.
Till October, Railways had received more than 7,500 complaints from passengers over bad quality of food served on trains and imposed fines of about Rs 1.5 crore on vendors.
In a similar incident, a US student conned KFC employees in South Africa into giving him free meals for a year, as he posed as a food quality inspector from the fast food chain¡¯s ¡°head office.¡±
The man - a student from the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa - spun a very convincing story about being a food quality officer and tricked employees at KFC.
A KFC staff was quoted by Xpouzar as saying, "When he arrived we would all try to act our best so that we didn't piss off the man from head office - he was so convincing because he was so confident, and even colleagues from other branches of KFC know him."
