India’s most notorious conman, once sold Taj Mahal, Red Fort, Rashtrapati Bhavan, forged President’s signature, his name was…

There have been many infamous conmen and fraudsters who have earned notoriety and infamy in history but perhaps none more notorious than the devious Natwarlal– a name that has become synonymous with fraud and trickery. Let us find out more about this mysterious figure, his origins, modus operandi, misdeeds, and more.

Who was Natwarlal?

Born in Bangra village in Siwan district of Bihar in 1912, Mithilesh Kumar Srivastava. later known by his infamous moniker Natwarlal, was the son of a station master. Natwarlal stumbled upon his true ‘talent’– forgeries– when he successfully forged a neighbour’s signature who had tasked him to deposit his bank drafts.

The sly conman expertly forged his neighbour’s signature to withdraw Rs 1,000– a substantial amount at the time– from the latter’s account before his crime came to light, forcing him to flee to Kolkata (then Calcutta), where he pursued as a bachelor of commerce degree, while working as a casual stock broker.

For a while, Mithilesh tried mending his ways but went back to committing fraud and forgeries after his cloth business failed to take off. His background, including his father’s employment as station master, made him privy to how the railway freight industry worked in India, while his commerce degree and his brief stint as a stock broker made him aware of banking rules, and ways to bend them.

Natwarlal’s first arrest came in 1937 for stealing nine tonnes of iron, after which he changed his modus operandi, and started robbing sex workers of money and jewelry after drugging them with tainted liquor. But over time, Natwarlal found this was a risky operation, and went to back conning and forgeries.

Natwarlal’s wave of cons and forgeries

According to police records, Natwarlal used over fifty aliases and reportedly duped hundreds if not thousands of bankers, shop owners, jewelers, and foreigners of lakhs of rupees, using innovative con ideas to dupe his victims.

As per legend, Natwarlal even “sold” prominent monuments, including the Taj Mahal, the Red Fort (Lal Quila), and even the Rashtrapati Bhavan to a foreign national by forging the signatures of the then President of India. Natwarlal was an expert forger, and is said to have conned noted Indian industrialists, including the Tatas, the Birlas, and even Reliance founder Dhirubhai Ambani himself, by forging signatures to take significant sums of money from them.

Common thief of Robin Hood?

Despite his crimes, Natwarlal is reportedly revered as a Robin Hood-esque figure in his native Bangra village, as he is said have distributed his ill-gotten earning among the needy and the less-fortunate. His tales of conning the rich by non-violent, and often comic means, have become the stuff of legend in his birthplace, and its reported that the infamous conman often drew large crowds whenever he paid a visit to his hometown.

According to one popular story involving Natwarlal, he once hosted a large feast of villager in Bangra, and distributed Rs 100 among each villager before vanishing.

Natwarlal’s innovative jailbreaks and run-ins with the police

As was inevitable, Natwarlal wave of financial crimes landed him in jail and he was handed sentences that would ensure he never saw the outside world again. In Bihar, he was sentenced to 113 years in jail after being convicted in 14 cases of forgery.

He is believed to have been arrested at least nine-ten times, but managed to flee almost every time using novel and cunning methods, including once escaping the Kanpur jail in 1957 by bribing jail guards with a suitcase full of money, donning a smuggled police uniform, and then simply walking out of the front gate as the guards there saluted.

The jail guards later discovered that the suitcase he gave them contained old newspapers, not money, giving the situation a hilarious turn. Despite numerous arrests, Natwarlal is believed to have spent only 20 years in jail though he faced sentences in hundreds of years.

‘Vanished’ in 1996

Natwarlal’s last arrest came in 1996 when he was wheelchair-bound due to old age (he was 84 at the time), but astonishingly he managed to escape again, despite his fragile state. According to reports, Natwarlal was being transported by the police from the Kanpur jail to AIIMS, Delhi for medical attention when he made his escape.

He was never seen again. Natwarlal’s name last came up in 2004, when his lawyer claimed to be the executor of his will. There are reports that Natwarlal died in 2009, while his family claim that he passed away in 1996.

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