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Kerry Packer famously described former ABC chairman Fred Hilmer as “the most educated f-wit I ever met”. Packer’s pithy dismissal of the well-credentialled was a blunt reminder that even highly-educated people can often be very, very dumb – at least outside their specialised field.
Besides, a university education is only what you make of it. Any fool can get a degree, and many do. Some of them go on to be very successful – and still as dumb as a box of rocks.
One doctor is surely feeling very, very foolish, right about now.
Who wouldn’t want to possess the wish-granting genie residing in the lamp of Aladdin from The Arabian Nights? Then again, everyone knows that it is nothing more than a fantasy. But a doctor from India learnt the lesson in a painful way after being duped of $93,000 for a lamp that was sold to him as the fabled original magic lamp.
Dr. L A Khan from the city of Meerut in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh was tricked into buying the lamp by two men who convinced him that the lamp would bring him good fortune, and after a godman made a “jinn” or genie appear from the lamp. “The cheats had struck a deal for much more but the doctor had paid about seven million rupees ($93,000),” Amit Rai, a senior police officer, told media.
Well, I mean – they made a genie appear!
During one of the visits, the “genie” appeared in front of Dr. Khan. “I did not know who this person was at that time”, he said. He later realized that it was just one of the men dressed up as the genie.
He even sang “Friend like me” and pulled a rabbit out of his turban.
Khan, a London-returned doctor, filed a complaint on Oct. 25, 2020 with the local police, in which he described his ordeal in detail. According to him, he made the acquaintance of the two men—Ikramuddin and Anees—when he began treating a woman who the two claimed to be their ‘sick mother’.
“I started visiting their home to treat the supposed mother. The visits continued for over a month. Gradually they started telling me about a baba (godman) whom they claimed also visited their home. They started brainwashing me and asked me to meet this baba,” said Dr. Khan in his complaint, according to NDTV.
He eventually met the godman who “seemed to perform such rituals”. First, they charged him for making the genie grant him wishes but dodged his requests to purchase the lamp. They told him that the lamp would cost around $235,000 but [they would] sell it for less and that it had to be locked in a box for two years or ill fate would befall his family, according to Times of India.
If it’s any consolation to the dopey doc, he was far from the only dupe for the magical shysters.
“We have found that the same men went to other homes in the city too and cheated many families in the name of ‘tantra vidya’ (magic). We have found the involvement of three people so far. Two have been arrested. A woman is on the run,” said Rai according to NDTV.
But, wait – wasn’t she sick? Boy, she got better fast.
Maybe it was one of the genie’s wishes.
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