Police arrest man accused of running ‘Westarctica’ embassy from rented Delhi building

Posing as an envoy from micronations, Harshvardhan Jain allegedly duped jobseekers and laundered money

Indian authorities have arrested a 47-year-old man accused of posing as a diplomat and operating a bogus embassy from a rented bungalow in the suburbs of New Delhi.

The property had luxury cars with fake diplomatic plates, doctored photos of the “fake” diplomat with world leaders, and seals of imaginary nations, police said.

The man, identified as Harshvardhan Jain, allegedly conned unsuspecting jobseekers by promising overseas employment and lucrative foreign deals under the guise of ambassadorial clout.

According to Sushil Ghule, a senior officer with Uttar Pradesh’s Special Task Force (STF), Mr Jain introduced himself as an adviser or ambassador to “micronations” such as “Seborga, Lodonia, Poulvia and Westarctica”.

Inside the property, police uncovered an elaborate setup: international flags, falsified insignia of India’s ministry of external affairs, and nearly three dozen fake seals from various nations.

Investigators also seized four luxury vehicles fitted with counterfeit diplomatic number plates, around 4.5m Indian rupees (approximately £38,000) in Indian and foreign currency, and multiple forged documents, according to the Associated Press.

Photographs recovered from the scene showed Mr Jain with political leaders, including prime minister Narendra Modi. Police believe the pictures were digitally manipulated.

A luxury car and a bicycle are seen parked outside a rented residential building in which a bogus embassy was running in Ghaziabad, the outskirts of New Delhi, India (AP)

Authorities also accuse Mr Jain of using shell companies overseas to facilitate illegal money transfers and laundering operations. He now faces a range of charges, including impersonation, forgery, and possession of forged documents.

According to India Today, he turned a rented bungalow in Ghaziabad’s Kavi Nagar into the so-called “Embassy of Westarctica”. The building had flags marking the micronations, luxury cars bearing fake diplomatic plates, and the interiors mimicked a real consulate.

While Seborga is a town in northern Italy with a self-declared prince and a symbolic government, Ladonia is a Swedish nature reserve founded by artist Lars Vilks. Westarctica is an unrecognised Antarctic micronation. Mr Jain is said to have made up the name of Poulvia.

Mr Jain was reportedly born into a wealthy marble-trading family in Rajasthan and studied business in India and the UK.

This wasn’t his first run-in with law enforcement. In 2011, he was booked for possessing illegal satellite phones, with a case registered at Ghaziabad’s Kavi Nagar police station, said UP Police senior officer Amitabh Yash.