A man named Mitul Trivedi was arrested in Surat, Gujarat on Tuesday for posing as an ISRO scientist involved in the Chandrayaan-3 mission. Trivedi is a private tutor and allegedly impersonated an ISRO scientist to draw more students to his tuition classes. He even produced fake appointment letters and certificates to support his claims.
The police said that Trivedi gave interviews to the media after the successful soft-landing of Chandrayaan-3 on the moon on August 23. He claimed that he was the "vice chairman" of ISRO's "Asian Science Applications Department" and that he had designed the lander module for the mission.
“A thorough investigation revealed that the man was in no way connected to ISRO's Chandrayaan-3 mission and had made false claims of being an ISRO employee,” the police said in a statement.
Additional Commissioner of Police Sharad Singhal said Trivedi is a private tutor, who posed as an ISRO scientist before the media to attract more students to his tuition classes.
"We contacted the ISRO which said that prima facie the letter shown by the accused was not issued by it. The space agency will send a detailed reply to us soon," he said.
The police investigation revealed that Trivedi had no connection to ISRO and had never worked on the Chandrayaan-3 mission. He was arrested and charged with fraud and impersonation.
The Surat city crime branch lodged an FIR against the accused under Sections 419 (cheating by impersonation), 465 (forgery), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating) and 471 (using forged document as genuine) of the IPC, it said.
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