In hot pursuit of this man, J&K Police arrived at a house in Zewan area in Srinagar’s outskirts on September 24. A woman who answered the door told them that he had already left. The personnel asked her to show them the room where he stayed. The woman led them and, gingerly, tapped on the door.This was when the Crime Branch sleuths got alerted. “Why would someone tap on a door with no one inside?” said an official connected with the probe.The team instinctively spread out; some barged into the room, others secured the windows.Inside, an elderly man sat under a dim light, his favourite Urdu newspaper in hand, with little knowledge that it was this love for the broadsheet that landed police at the door of the house where he had been hiding all this while.He is Somnath Koul. Or Mohan Lal Dhar. Or Brijnath Bhat. Or Hadinath Dhar. It depends on whom you ask, or which identity document he chooses to produce. But the police department in the Union Territory already had a moniker for him: “Charles Sobhraj of Kashmir”.Police say that for almost a decade now, Koul, now 80, had been swindling Valley residents with promises of selling them land left behind by Kashmiri Pandit migrants like himself. To some, he would pose as an attorney facilitating the sale. In other cases, he would pose as the owner himself, beguiling the potential buyers with his story of having to leave his home due to the onset of militancy in the 1990s.None of the land that he wanted to sell belonged to him in the first place, said a police officer.Story continues below this adKoul would identify the land left behind by the Pandits, strike a deal with prospective buyers with forged documents, collect the money and disappear, the officer added.That was until January this year when police found Koul’s photograph affixed to one of the fake sale documents. It set off a nine-month-long hunt that eventually uncovered a trail of fraudulent land deals dating as far back as 2017.The huntIn November last year, a south Kashmir resident approached the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Crime Branch, stating that he had bought five kanals (a little over half an acre) of land at Drusoo village in Pulwama and 300 poplar trees planted on a parcel of land in Bijbehara after paying Rs 93 lakh. The complainant said that when he went to court for ratification of ‘Agreement to Sell’, he was told that the land doesn’t belong to the person shown as seller in the agreement.On April 1 this year, the Crime Branch registered a formal FIR against Koul, setting off an investigation in motion.Story continues below this ad“It was a piece of land belonging to a migrant Kashmiri Pandit and Koul had posed as the owner’s attorney. In the case of the Bijbehara property, he claimed to be the owner himself,” said an investigating officer. “When we contacted the actual owner, he told us he had not given anyone a power of attorney. “The ‘Agreement to Sell’ listed Koul as a resident of a locality in Jammu with an alternate address in Bengaluru. But when police teams reached the two addresses, Koul was nowhere to be found.But the so-called agreement offered police a crucial clue.The witnessGhulam Mohidin Dar, a resident of Budgam in central Kashmir, had signed the document as a witness. In August, Crime Branch sleuths reached his house.Dar told the officials he would change his clothes and accompany them. “We were waiting for him when his family members attacked us,” an officer said. “In the melee, Dar managed to escape.”Story continues below this adOn September 17, after a 10-kilometre chase from Rajbagh to Kanipora, Dar was nabbed.Police investigations revealed that Dar, himself an influential land broker, would lure the buyers for Koul.This is when police started learning about Koul’s multiple identities.Said to be a retired Ayurvedic doctor, Koul’s name in his service records is Brijnath Bhat. He owns two Voter Identity cards and two Aadhaar cards each. In one voter card, he is Brijnath Bhat. In the other, he is Hadinath Dhar. His two Aadhaar cards identify him as Somnath Koul and Mohan Lal Dhar, respectively.Story continues below this ad“Of the four documents, only one could be genuine. We checked with the Aadhaar database, his name was recorded as Somnath Koul,” says an officer. “It was a mystery for us. If his name in so-called service records was Brijnath Bhat, how could he make an Aadhaar in the name of Somnath Koul?”Finger tips damaged, iris alteredAs the mystery about his identity deepened, police decided to go for biometrics. It threw up more surprises. “He had destroyed his fingertips. When we asked him about it, he said he had accidentally burnt them,” the officer said. “His iris scans too failed many times. The official at the Aadhaar centre said he most likely had an eye surgery. We really had a hard time getting one of his iris scans matched.”The officials went through his Aadhaar records and were left befuddled once more. In 2016, Koul applied for an Aadhaar card in the name of Brijnath Bhat, a resident of Muthi in Jammu. The name matched his service records.Also Read | The slippery serial killer Inspector Zende caught twice: Life & times of Charles SobhrajIn 2022, he, however, changed the name on his Aadhaar to Somnath Koul. “We are checking how it happened,” the officer said.Story continues below this adThe ‘Agreement to sell’ also showed his name as Somnath Koul.The man himself, though, remained elusive, prompting J&K police to liken him with Charles Sobhraj – the famous con artist.But interrogating Dar, police came upon a curious piece of information.Koul was an avid reader of newspapers. Apart from his favourite one published from the Valley, he would also subscribe to a bunch of newspapers from Jammu. Police began keeping a track of this unique bunch of reading material, which finally landed them at the house of his acquaintance in Zewan.Story continues below this adBack at the Crime Branch, officials went through its own database to check cases against different identities assumed by Koul. They found at least four other cases, the oldest one dating back to 2017 and registered at the EOW of the Crime Branch. The three other cases were registered in the EOW and Special Crime Wing from 2021 to 2026.Past casesThe complainant in the first case, police said, knew him as Brijnath Bhat.In his complaint, a villager stated that Koul posed himself as an attorney for a piece of land at Goshabugh in Pattan, Baramulla. A deal was done for 11 kanals and 3 marlas, a little less than one-and-a-half acre, for Rs 55 lakh. The parcel included some pieces of land belonging to Kashmiri Pandit migrants. After the complainant paid Rs 9.17 lakh in advance, Koul disappeared without a trace.In 2021, Koul again posed as an attorney, out to sell one-and-a-half kanal of Pandit land at Gulab Bagh Pandach in Srinagar. This time, he again identified himself as Brijnath Bhat. After allegedly taking Rs 47 lakh from the buyer, he disappeared. Police filed a chargesheet in absentia.Story continues below this adTwo years later, police received two more complaints. Koul allegedly promised the same piece of land to two different buyers at Humhama near the Srinagar airport. To one man, he identified himself as Brijnath Bhat. To the other, he was Hadinath Dhar. He took a combined total of Rs 1 crore from the two men and disappeared, said police.Also Read | Charles Sobhraj exclusive interview: ‘I am going straight back to France to my family… I hope to live for many years to come’In the latest case, he had taken Rs 15 lakh from his buyer before doing the vanishing act, and being arrested months later.With his arrest, J&K Police have finally learnt that the man they compared with “Charles Sobhraj”, a criminal known for his flamboyance, is a frail former Ayurvedic doctor with a penchant for the good old newspaper.Koul, or Bhat, is now in Srinagar Central Jail serving judicial custody.“It was his love for the newspapers that finally proved to be his undoing,” said an officer connected with the probe.