A rather unusual crime took place in the Indian city of Bagyeish. At least, this is the opinion of the law enforcement agencies, although those arrested claim that they have not done anything illegal. According to the Press Trust of India, India's largest news agency, four men, including a police driver, were detained while trying to sell an alleged lamp with a genie capable of fulfilling its owner's wishes.
A certain Tapas Roy Chowdhury recently received a call from his friend, who said that he had found a lamp for sale with a genie imprisoned in it, but it was necessary to pay 16 thousand dollars for it. Excited by this opportunity, Tapas told another friend of his, Basudb Kundu, about it. Chowdhury and Kundu scooped up the required amount (including several loans) and headed for a meeting at a local hotel. When they met with the four sellers, they showed the buyers an old metal oil lamp in which the mystical wish-doer was supposedly huddled.
Chowdhury, however, soon suspected that the sellers were acting illogical, trying to exchange the old vessel for money. Why would they, one wonders, need 16 thousand when they could ask the genie for a million or even a billion dollars? There was a serious scuffle in the room between the sellers and the failed buyers, which caused the hotel staff to call the police. The lamp's owners were arrested on fraud charges. However, the law enforcers failed to grasp one strange detail in what happened. The fact is that an old oil lamp, even without the almighty genie in it, turned out to be very valuable, and its cost, according to conservative estimates, exceeds 22 thousand dollars, not to mention the fact that at a solid international auction this figure can rise to several hundreds of thousands. It turns outthat the “scammers” deceived not only gullible buyers in the person of Chowdhury and Kundu, but also themselves …
Daniil Myslinsky