Surat: City-based Mitul Trivedi who had made false claims before the media that he had designed the Chandrayaan-3 lander is now on the run. His house is locked and his phone is switched off, claims a news report.

The probe into Mitul Trivedi’s claims was handed over to Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Hetal Patel earlier. Mitul had reached the city police commissioner’s office but failed to submit any document to show that he was even remotely associated with India’s Space research organization ISRO.

After Chadrayaan-3’s success, Trivedi had told media persons in different interviews that he designed the lander of the moon mission in such a way that contrary to what happens at the time of the landing of the helicopter, the landing of Vikram lander would not result into the dust of the ground flying all over in the air.

Trivedi had one of the press interviews that claimed that he had been associated with ISRO since 2011 and NASA since 2013. He claimed he is a member of the design team for the year 2024 lunar human mission of NASA. He had claimed that he would be involved in the design project of Aditya L1 and Gaganyan Mission of ISRO. Trivedi also claimed that he did BSc and MSc in Physics and later went to Cambridge University to study Quantum Physics and went to Oxford University to study Anthropology and Vedant as Ph.D. student. He also claimed that he was a member of the Archaeological Survey of India(ASA). He claimed he could read 45 ancient languages.

Mitul came into the limelight on the backdrop of the Chandrayaan-3 mission of ISRO after his audio clip speaking to his teacher Arjun Patel went viral. Local newspapers including Dhabkar, and Divya Bhaskar among others had published a full-scale news story hailing Mitul Patel’s contribution to Chandrayaan. However section of the media smelled something fishy in Mitul’s claim and put a question mark on his claim, after which Bharatiya Gauraksh manch’s chief Dharmesh Gami submitted an application in police demanding filing of offence against Mitul.

Subsequently, Mitul was called by the Special Branch DCP of the city Police, Hetal Patel. He arrived at the Commissioner’s office where he was confronted by the media’s questions. However, Mitul ignored the media and refrained from giving any satisfactory reply. DCP Patel said Mitul was asked to come with documents supporting his claims, but he failed to do so.

According to a news report, a few years ago, Mitul had claimed that he was a scientist professor of the coastal domain and also claimed that there was another Dwarika town in the sea made of gold in the sea near Olpad in South Gujarat.

After news reports hailing Mitul in local newspapers, the textile traders ha on Monday organized a felicitation programme which was later cancelled.

The probe into Mitul’s claims has been now handed over to the city crime branch of the police.

Police prima facie believe that Mitul is a harmless person, he just claims big and talks big, that’s it.