khoji parkCrime · New Delhi · 1996
The Ageing Prisoner Who Disappeared on a Medical Journey
The most familiar version of the man was not always the most verifiable.
Read in slides1. A name larger than its owner
Mithilesh Kumar Srivastava became widely known as Natwarlal, a name associated with fraud and forgery in India. Stories about him grew so elaborate that separating convictions and reporting from folklore became essential. Claims that he repeatedly sold major monuments are famous, but their popularity does not make every supposed transaction a securely documented real-life incident.
The most familiar version of the man was not always the most verifiable.
2. The paper behind the cons
Contemporary reporting described schemes involving false identities, forged instruments and apparent official authority. Such fraud worked by making a document or a role seem more trustworthy than it was. The documented criminal career offers enough material without adding a cinematic scene in which he sells Parliament together with its members or persuades a buyer to own a national landmark.
The credible story lies in manipulated trust, not every spectacular legend.
3. Custody and repeated escapes
Natwarlal accumulated convictions and became known for escaping custody. Reports disagree on some totals and details, so a single precise lifetime tally can imply more certainty than the evidence supports. By the 1990s, he was an elderly prisoner, creating a stark contrast between the vulnerability associated with age and the reputation for evasion that followed him.
Age appeared to make the prisoner easier to contain.
4. A medical transfer
In June 1996, he was being taken from custody for medical treatment in New Delhi, according to later reporting. The journey involved an elderly man who used a wheelchair rather than an obviously athletic escape artist. That setting supplied the event’s unusual tension: supervision still mattered even when the person being guarded seemed physically unlikely to make a conventional dash.
The transfer looked less dangerous than his reputation.
5. Missing at the station
Reports place his disappearance at New Delhi railway station during that journey. The exact mechanics are not established well enough to invent a detailed sequence of bribed guards or exchanged disguises. The supported event is the loss of custody itself, which left authorities without the prisoner they were supposed to be escorting for treatment.
The guarded patient had become an unaccounted-for fugitive.
6. Conflicting endings
Later accounts gave different dates for Natwarlal’s death, with a lawyer’s 2009 claim and a family account placing it much earlier. That uncertainty should remain visible rather than being tidied into one confident ending. The contradictory reports helped sustain his reputation as someone who could leave even the final administrative question about his life difficult to settle.
Even the end of the story arrived with competing paperwork.
7. An escape beyond the legend
The reported medical-transfer disappearance became another episode in a life already surrounded by improbable tales. This time the contradiction was visible without an imaginary monument sale: an ageing man considered frail enough to need a wheelchair had still been lost from police custody. The escort journey ended with officials searching for the patient they had been meant to deliver.
The legend promised impossible tricks. The station produced a very real absence.