World of the Bizarre

Pastor in India tricks woman into buying box with 'magic powers'

By T.K. Randall
December 8, 2023

Image: AI-generated (Midjourney) According to reports, the strange scheme saw Rev Timothy Joshi of the New Life Church Ministry in Darjeelin, India, convince a woman to purchase a 'magical' box for an eye-watering sum of money.

The pastor had allegedly told the unsuspecting woman that he had experienced a divine revelation indicating that the box, which had been found on local farmland, would bring her great fortune.

The amount of money he'd requested in exchange for the box was a staggering 220 million rupees (equivalent to $2.6 million USD), but the woman ended up paying only one instalment of around 35 million rupees ($400,000) when a second man - Manish Awasti - offered to buy the box off her.

The two fraudsters even invited her to Kolkata for a meeting while posing as businessmen.In the end, the victim was told that she couldn't have the box because the police were trying to confiscate it.

When the crooks refused to refund her money, she decided to contact the authorities herself to register a complaint.

It turned out that Joshi had used his status as a priest to pull off several other similar scams.

"It is unimaginable that these things are happening in our society," Zelhou Keyho, general secretary of the Nagaland Baptist Church Council, told UCA News.

"Time and again we have seen fraudsters targeting people from Nagaland."

Source: UCA News

Tags: India