Serial Indian conman guru jailed in UK
Saturday, 21/02/2015
http://paper.hindustantimes.com/epaper/viewer.aspx
LONDON: Mohammed Umar Ashrafi, who posed as a spiritual healer with a direct line to Sai Baba, was on Wednesday found guilty of fraud and blackmail, and sentenced to nine years in jail after a widelyfollowed trial hailed by rationalists in Britain.
It is the first case of its kind involving a ‘faith healer’ who conned vulnerable people in the Indian and Asian communities of more than a million pounds. Ashrafi, 50, who also called himself ‘Kamal-ji’, operated mainly in Leicester, London and Canada.
The Leicester Crown Court found Ashrafi guilty of 15 counts of fraud and one of blackmail. Sachdev Virdee, general secretary of Asian Rationalist Society of Britain, told HT this helped efforts to raise awareness how ‘babas’ operate.
