Flashbacks to July 2020:
It was the year when we were about to appear for our MHT-CET exam (an entrance exam for engineering students based in Maharashtra). Our exams had been already delayed by three months due to covid. We used to attend online lectures on Unacademy for CET where there were several students from Maharashtra. As time passed, slowly our friendship developed among students attending maths lectures and we formed a group on WhatsApp as well. There was a strange guy who was a part of our group and always used to send maths problems which couldn't be solved by anyone as they were engineering level problems. People started to appreciate him for his wit and regularly used to approach him for doubts. So why did i call him strange? You'll get to know as soon we proceed further.
He used to disguise himself as if he were appearing for MHT-CET and was a defense migrant transferred in Maharashtra couple of years ago. The months of July and August passed by and he gradually became crowd's favourite including me. He used to be amongst the toppers in every Maths quiz. He even used to present his electronics projects to us which were again of the engineering level. We can say he had overachieved a lot of things and scaled great heights in his life before engineering which can be barely achieved at that age. But then I was involved in an rift with him. One day he asked for Organic Chemistry Notes so i sent him a renowned professor's notes which contained his watermark. He then morphed the document and added his own watermark which he sent on the group saying it was made by him! I light-heartedly tingled him in the group saying it's that famous professor's notes originally but he took it seriously. Since then he has been plotting against me for exposing him. He was a kinda weirdo already who used to keep on leaving the group and joining it again just to grab people's attention and distracting them.
Everything was sunshine in our group until October where it was the actual test of our potential, the exam we were preparing for "The MHT-CET". First 8 days PCB (Physics+Chemistry+Biology) papers were conducted and in the midst of the event he left the group again! He forwarded a message through one of my friends saying "Mere saath doglapanti hui hai jabtak voh 8 log group se nikalte nahi tabtak mai group me nhi aa raha". Elaborating the sentence "I had been treated badly in this group by 8 people and until they leave i'm not gonna join the group again." Now this was some serious shit committed by him as exams were going on and nobody has time to talk anything rubbish against each other. The conclusion, it was a means to distract people in the group during examinations. We handled the situation with grit and calmed everyone down and told them to apologize to him personally if they felt they had troubled him. As everyone's exams were over he joined the group again and there was no such case of him until November.
November end, it was the results time and everyone got their results. Many of them were happy, some were concerned about their future. Amidst all this, the weird guy claimed to have scored 99.97 percentile which is considered as a really good score in getting into any top college. (99.97%ile is equal to above 180 marks out of 200 in MHT-CET) He had become a legend throughout unacademy and more and more people started appreciating him and considered him as "God". He was interviewed by our Mathematics teacher and it was published on social platforms.
After a few days our admission procedure for getting an engineering college started and something strange happened. He messaged me personally and said he had already taken admission in Computer Engineering in the country's one of the prestigious colleges in July and said he didn't wanna break bonds with our Maths teacher so he was hiding it. Even his name wasn't visible in the merit list! And coming to electronics projects, it was his college project. Though there was no such specific reaction on my side, certain facts were still unknown. First, has he really appeared for MHT-CET and is he living in Maharashtra. Second, is he of our age or faking this as well? This was a mystery for us especially me upto a few months.
He left the group again in January 2021. I invited him again in March along with a few new joinees and this time he was back with a bang, with a much greater caliber and loads of knowledge under his belt. This time he was purely an attention seeker trying to grab attention among large crowd and opposing people whom he thought were superior to him and also intending to become the leader of the group for sharing so many resources. We also created a coding group which I eventually left due to some shitty politics. All the authorities to the group were with him and after a few days he started to misbehave. Around August I decided to leave the main group as well unwilling to tolerate all the toxicity and the politics out there. Some of them left the group after I left and it was really heart touching! Since then I didn't regret leaving the group as I made several friends for lifetime whom I could ponder upon anytime! Remaining people used to provide me updates regarding group's scenario and it was all spoilt by the guy till then. I decided not to divert my mind as I wasn't a part of the group anymore.
But! Suddenly after two months we actually came across that he has not appeared for MHT-CET and even is faking his age and his department. How did we get to know this? Through himself! Not gonna lie, but indirectly he exposed himself by saying he's learning cyber security as a part of college syllabus but later on when we checked his syllabus we finally got to know he's our senior and his electronics projects and cyber security stuff were also done a year ahead of us! And we were considering him as an extraordinary student. Imagine a guy who is already in his second year and in India's one of the best colleges, why will he migrate to Maharashtra to appear for MHT-CET? Now makes sense right! He actually betrayed everyone and even our Maths teacher who took his interview! At a point one of my friends approached him for a doubt, his brother messaged him saying that he died in a car accident and we were all shocked to hear this! Later on he claimed it was a prank by his friend but the reality was he didn't wanna solve the doubt so he pranked my friend. Such was the extent he went upto!
He had also created a google drive in November 2020 for all the desired study material. Much later he restricted everyone's access to the google drive due to some privacy issues and if they wanna access they should provide him their email id. What he did is he joined several groups and messaged around 1200 people from the front personally and granted access to them. How can a person have so much quality time doing all this? If he had to message 1200 people then why did he restrict the access? This is extreme level foolishness.
After a few months he was exposed by one of the group mates and he decided not to be in contact with anyone of us again!
To sum up the entire story, he was an attention seeker who would cross any limits just for the sake of his own promotion and randomly joined our community to show off among juniors whatever he knows and fun fact, he used to google almost everything and answer queries :) and nobody was aware of all his exploits until he was exposed! The question arises why did he do all this? Simple reason, he might not have friends in his college due to his behaviour so he wandered everywhere as a stranger and found us in the proceedings. Should he be forgiven for whatever he has done? Many a times he has regretted for his actions but later went on to misbehave again. Everything has been going on in a loop. Misbehave --> Regret --> Repeat. So, hell not he's meant to be forgiven! If he genuinely claimed all the details truthfully and entered our group we would have accepted him with a big heart but instead he betrayed everyone and misbehaved citing he's just an attention grabber who's the antagonist for disrupting such a wonderful group by his activities!
So what i wanted to convey through this entire story is that we will meet such strangers who'll wander around to make friends as they don't have theirs. They may fake their details and for the namesake of friendship, they'll trick people by various means to establish their own rule without caring about people. So better let them not enter among you and be away from them. Though it was a terrible experience, i still thank god for this experience as we learnt to deal with such people and be prepared for such incidents in future!
Signing off!
P.S.- I got to contact him recently and he's still wandering around many groups trying to grab people's attention. He never changed since then😂 He apologized though for his actions but later went on behave the same way as expected. It's his final year in engineering with no prior technical experience and every technical stuff he displays is just show off. Better if he realizes this and starts working on himself!