With three persons being arrested in two separate cases recently, ‘rice pulling’ seems to have become an increasingly popular way of cheating gullible persons in the city.
While science is at pains to explain if the copper and bronze vessels can actually draw grains of rice towards them, it has been established as the best way for fraudsters to relieve unsuspecting individuals of their material wealth.
According to police, the swindlers claim that their vessels have turned into uranium, used by nuclear power reactors as raw material, after attaining magical powers. Strangely enough, they are finding many takers for their cock-and-bull stories.
The most recent rice-pulling fraud involved HM Chandrashekharaiah, a planter from Agumbe in Shimoga district. According to him, a lightning bolt had hit a coconut tree near his house and a copper vessel kept under it.
When he told a friend, BN Ramesh, about the incident, the latter told Chandrashekharaiah that the vessel could now perform miracles – including rice pulling. Stating that the government would be willing to pay through its teeth for such a utensil, he asked for Rs28-lakh “processing fee” from Chandrashekharaiah.
As security for the money, Ramesh gave him a cheque of Rs51 lakh. However, when Chandrashekharaiah went to a nearby bank to verify the cheque’s genuineness, he realised that he had been cheated. He lodged a complaint with the Upparpet police, who arrested Ramesh.
In another incident, Radhakrishna from Padmanabhanagar faced a similar problem. Upon receiving news that a person from Gowribidanur in Chikaballapur possessed an enchanted ‘rice-pulling’ vessel, he decided to buy it. On Monday, he set out for the place, only to get kidnapped.
Ramesh, one of the persons arrested for the kidnapping, said, “I do not know if Radhakrishna was shown the vessel or not, but I am sure that he had come to buy it. My bosses Sriram and Nagaraj had summoned Radhakrishna to Gowribidanur.”
The police had rescued Radhakrishna from Adi Narayanaswamy hills, bordering Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, on Wednesday.
