Tamil Nadu man Bingson John came in many disguises—a foreign tourist guide, an English teacher, or a yoga trainer—but all of those were uncovered when the police arrested the 69-year-old.
The charges? Defrauding more than 300 luxury hotels over a period of 36 years (since 1990), which has since baffled the police.
Police said John typically stayed at such hotels for several days, used their facilities, and then disappeared without paying the bill. He sometimes even took hotel property with him.
John's latest target was the Hyatt Hotel in Raipur, where he stayed for two days, left without paying a bill of Rs 63,755, and took away a laptop worth around Rs 1.48 lakh, the police said, as per an NDTV report.
The hotel complained to the Anti-Crime and Cyber Unit, which put the Telibandha Police on the trail for John, who said that his methods were inspired by notorious serial killer Charles Sobhraj.
The police analysed the mobile phone records of the accused, various documents, and other important evidence before he was traced to Odisha's Bhubaneswar.
What should have been a routine scam for John soon turned into his last—he was arrested just 72 hours after the hotel's complaint, after which they also recovered the laptop that he had stolen under the pretext of "office work".
First arrested in 1996, for which he was sent to Tihar Jail, Bingson John later spent nearly 15 years in prisons in various parts of India, such as Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Goa, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Karnataka.
However, it was from his time at the Tihar Jail that he claimed he was influenced by the methods of the French serial killer and conman.
Famously called the 'The Bikini Killer' because he was known to target Western women embarking on the hippie trail to South Asia in the 1970s, Sobhraj is also often called 'The Serpent', for his ability to disguise himself and deceive people.
A famous example of this was when Sobhraj was once cornered by the Nepal police back in 1975. Assuming the identity of a Dutch teacher—whom he had already killed in Bangkok—he was able to talk himself out of arrest, as per a Guardian report.
Bingson John adopted similar methods, using his English-medium education and tourist guide experience to con his way into staying at luxury hotels for a few days every time he got out of jail.
The Raipur police are now verifying his criminal record—as they collate details of the cases registered against him in different states—and have also produced him in court.
