Scammers in India managed to set up and operate a fake branch of the country’s largest bank, the State Bank of India, for 10 days in order to trick people into paying to secure stable jobs there.

The people of Chhapora, a village in India’s Chhattisgarh state, were surprised to see a branch of the State Bank of India opening up in their modest settlement, but while some were skeptical from the very beginning, many saw it as an opportunity to get a stable, decent-paying job. 25-year-old Pintu Dhurve was one of the six people who managed to secure employment as a cashier at the newly opened SBI branch, for which he paid 580,000 rupees ($6,900). There were some red flags, like the complete lack of work to be done and the absence of ID cards for employees, but the SBI logo at the entrance, the 1000 sq. foot “workspace”, brand-new furnishings, and operational bank counters all convinced him that the bank was legit. It wasn’t!

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Doctors at a hospital in New Delhi, India, were shocked to find a live 3-centimeter cockroach in the small intestine of a patient complaining of stomach ache and indigestion.

A 23-year-old man recently came to the Fortis Hospital, Vasal Kunj, to complain about stomach problems that he had been experiencing for about three days. He complained of severe abdominal pain, and difficulty in digesting food which resulted in frequent bloating. The man had consumed street food at a night market a few days prior and suspected that to be the cause of his health problems. Doctors decided that the best course of action was to conduct an Upper Gastrointestinal (GI) Endoscopy, a procedure that examines the upper part of the gastrointestinal tract, to hopefully discover the cause of the man’s symptoms. What they certainly didn’t expect to find was a live cockroach chilling in the man’s small intestine.

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An Indian couple is wanted by police for scamming dozens of unsuspecting victims by promising to make them look young again with the help of an Israeli time machine.

Rajeev Kumar Dubey and his wife Rashmi Dubey pulled off one of the most incredible scams in the history of mankind. The Indian couple owned a therapy center in Kanpur, India’s Uttar Pradesh state, where they allegedly convinced people that they were aging rapidly due to excessively polluted air and claimed that they could reverse the process with the help of an “Israel-made time machine” and oxygen therapy. The Dubeys are suspected of having deceived many elderly people looking for a way of regaining their youth and filling their pockets with 35 crore Indian rupees ($4.1 million).

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An Indian woman recently filed for divorce from her husband of only 40 days, claiming that he only bathed once or twice per month.

The unnamed woman from Agra, in India’s Uttar Pradesh state, approached the local family counseling center to complain about her husband’s poor personal hygiene, claiming that he rarely ever bathed, wore dirty clothes, and suffered from bad breath. She could barely stand close to the man, let alone be intimate with him. As a result, after only 40 days of marriage, the woman asked for a divorce. When questioned by the counseling center, the husband, Rajash, admitted to bathing only once or twice a month and cleansing by sprinkling his body with Gangajal (holy water from the river Ganges) once a week.

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A Pakistani father fearing for his daughter’s safety allegedly made her wear a surveillance camera on her head so he could keep an eye on her.

There is nothing a good parent won’t do to ensure their child’s safety! For example, one Pakistani man recently went viral on X (Twitter) for installing a surveillance camera on his young daughter’s head so he could monitor her activities throughout that day and make sure she was alright. In a viral video titled ‘Next Level Security’, the Pakistani woman is shown being interviewed while wearing a CCTV camera on her burka-covered head. Asked about the bizarre accessory, she said that it was his father’s idea, adding that she had nothing against it because she knew her parents were concerned about her safety.

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An Indian doctor is being accused of causing the death of a 15-year-old boy after operating on him while watching YouTube videos on how to surgically remove gallbladder stones.

Ajit Kumar Puri, a doctor at the Ganpati Hospital in Saran, India’s Bihar state, stands accused of causing the untimely death of a local teenager by operating on him without having the proper knowledge or skills. The boy’s family claim that they brought him to the hospital last week after he had vomited several times. He was admitted and his symptoms subsided, but Dr. Puri decided that he had to operate on the boy to remove a gallstone that was causing the vomiting. After sending the teen’s father away on an errand, the doctor operated on him without the family’s consent of the family, but this resulted in a sudden worsening of the boy’s condition. Eventually, Dr. Puri decided that he should be transferred to another hospital, but the patient died on the way, and the doctor went on the run after leaving his body on the steps of Patna Hospital before going on the run.

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The city of Vadodara, in the Indian state of Gujarat, is crawling with giant crocodiles following the overflowing of a local river caused by record rainfall.

As if having to deal with the water flooding their homes and streets wasn’t enough, the people of Vadodara have to be on the lookout for giant crocodiles waiting to snatch their animals or even attack them. Videos of giant reptiles walking through the streets, chilling on house roofs, or swimming in canals with dead animals between their jaws have been doing the rounds on Indian social media ever since the Vishwamitri River overflowed last week. The river is home to hundreds of freshwater crocodiles, at least two dozen of which were caught in Vadodara between August 27 and 29.

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Three remote villages in India’s Madhya Pradesh state have become famous for their ‘thief schools’ where children as young as 12 are trained in pickpocketing, theft, and robbery by seasoned criminals.

The three nondescript villages – Kadia, Gulkhedi, and Hulkhedi – located about 120 km from the state capital of Bhopal are reportedly nurseries for young criminals, with parents actually paying ‘tuition fees’ of  200,000 to 300,000 rupees ($2,400 to $3,600) to have their offspring trained in “dark arts” like pickpocketing and bag grabbing in crowded places, carrying out robberies, bank account thefts, evading the police, and even withstanding beatings in the event of being apprehended. These so-called ‘thief schools’ have produced some of the most infamous criminals in India’s history, so they are sought after by impoverished and less-educated families unable to give their children a proper education.

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An Indian teenager was accused of emotional blackmail after going on a hunger strike for three days to pressure his poor mother into buying him an iPhone.

A short video shot by a smartphone shop owner in India went viral last week for featuring a teenage boy who confessed to going on a hunger strike for three days to convince his mother to buy him a new iPhone. The woman, who reportedly makes a living by selling flowers outside a temple, is also featured in the video and has a facial expression that pretty much says everything about her inner struggle. Shared by Indian journalist Abhishek on X (formerly Twitter), the video has been viewed over a million times and has sparked a heated debate about gadgets as a status symbol and the entitlement of younger generations.

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A small shrine along the treacherous Gata Loops in India’s mountainous Ladakh region has become famous for the large number of plastic bottles left as offerings to a spirit known as the Ghost Of The Gata Loops.

Bicycle and motorcycle racers traversing the Gata Loops as part of their Trans-Himalaya tours are often confused by a large pile of plastic bottles around what looks like a makeshift shrine. Some confuse it for simple pollution, a consequence of the increase in popularity of the region with adventure tourism enthusiasts, but the explanation for this bizarre sight in the middle of nowhere is much more intriguing. Many of those who attempt to cross the Gata Loops leave water bottles at the shrine as offerings for the Ghost Of The Gata Loops, the wandering soul of a poor man who died here decades ago due to thirst and extreme cold. Some people believe that passing by without leaving a water bottle will upset the ghost and bring them bad luck on their arduous journey.

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An Indian man who had wrongfully been pronounced dead by the government turned to crime as a desperate way of proving that he was very much alive.

Baburam Bhil a 40-year-old man from Rajasthan’s Mithora village, had long been trying to convince authorities that he was still alive after they issued a death certificate in his name. He tried to correct the error, appealing to his village elders and state authorities, but to no avail, so he decided to go for a more extreme option. Afraid that all his properties would be confiscated by the government after his “death”, Baburam came to the conclusion that becoming a serious criminal was the best way of attracting attention to his problem. On July 19, he grabbed a knife and a petrol bottle and began terrorizing a local school.

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A 20-year-old Indian man claims to have been subjected to a sex change operation without his consent by another man who planned to marry him for his family’s land.

Mujahid, a 20-year-old man from Sanjak Village in Uttar Pradesh, has become the talk of an entire country after claiming that a male rival tricked him into going to the Begrajpur Medical College in Mansoorpur where a team of doctors sedated him and performed a gender change operation on him without his consent. The victim told authorities that a man named Omprakash deceived him into believing that he was suffering from a serious medical condition and then offered to take him to Mansoorpur to be treated. Mujahid claims that shortly after arriving at the hospital, he was sedated and then operated on by a team of doctors who had colluded with Omprakash. When he woke up the next day, he was told he was no longer a man, but a woman.

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The residents of an Indian village recently called the police about a floating human body in their pond, but it turned out to be a man taking a nap and cooling off on a hot summer day.

To their credit, the people of Reddypuram Kovelakunta, a village in India’s Andhra Pradesh state, didn’t immediately panic and call the police when they noticed a motionless human body in their pond. They tried calling out to it when they first spotted it, around 7 AM, but they got no answer, and seeing as the body didn’t move until 12 PM, they finally decided to call the authorities. A police unit and emergency services rushed to the scene, where they indeed discovered a human body floating in the water. Only what looked like a corpse turned out to be an inebriated man napping in the water after a grueling 10-day work stint at a local quarry.

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In what can only be described as an unconventional love story, an Indian man fell in love and ended up marrying his mother-in-law with his father-in-law’s blessing.

This bizarre tale begins with a tragedy. After the death of Sikandar Yadav’s wife, the father-of-two moved in with his in-laws in Bihar’s Heer Moti village. Over time, the relationship between 45-year-old Sikandar and his mother-in-law, Geeta (55), evolved into a romantic affair that they could only conceal for so long. As rumors of their secret affair started spreading through the village, Geeta’s husband became increasingly suspicious and one day caught the two lovebirds in a romantic embrace that confirmed his fears. Furious, the man brought the affair to the attention of the Panchayat (village council), demanding that the matter be resolved.

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Topi Amma, the mysterious ‘Hat Mother’ of Tiruvannamalai, a Hindu pilgrimage city in Tamil Nadu, is a controversial religious figure that has divided Indian society.

India has no shortage of mystics and real-life incarnations of Hindu deities that people flock to worship, but even in this context, Topi Amma is an unlikely religious figure. The hat-wearing woman is often referred to as a ‘siddha’, an enlightened being who has attained perfection, but to those with a more secular view of the world, she is just a mentally disabled woman in need of medical help. Where believers see a mystic walking through the streets of Tiruvannamalai and speaking in an ancient Tamil dialect that no one understands, others see a homeless woman wandering aimlessly and mumbling jibberish. It’s all a matter of perception, but considering Topi Amma doesn’t even seem to realize the religious craze she has inspired, the latter is probably true.

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