Scam sham
Jaspal Bhatti

“How much have you made in the last scam?” “Only a few hundred crore yaar. I was very unlucky because the government changed in between. The new police chief was not cooperating on the old terms”. Such a conversation is a normal business talk. The CBI has claimed that the key accused in the fake stamp paper scam Abdul Karim Telgi has made crores out of the scam.

Scams are proving to be as lucrative as legal business proposals. An investment for Rs 100 crore would include the expenditure of printing fake stamp papers, currency notes, stationery items, bribes at all levels. Also hiring the country’s best lawyers if the accused is arrested. By the time the accused come out of the jail, they make a profit of Rs 1000 crore.

One of the partners might point out that for all the money, it is a medium-degree project. Why not, he queries, initiate a bigger interstate scam involving at least two or three Chief Ministers as partners.

A few days back I was in Mumbai discussing a film proposal. Someone introduced a rich person from Bihar, with the additional qualification of serving a jail term in the fodder scam.

I persuaded him to invest his money in the film. He flatly refused saying that he would better invest his money in another scam where the returns are higher and for sure.

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