Satyavadi Arun: Tale of a conman who convinced people he was a NASA scientist

The story of 27-year-old Arun P Vijayakumar is a story about courage. It is a story about the importance of honesty and sincerity. Satyavadi Arun has proved to the entire world that there are indeed no limits to imagination. [caption id=“attachment_1780327” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Arun claimed he was going to be a research scientist at NASA. Agencies[/caption] Arun, a native of Manimala in Kottayam district in Kerala, made the entire nation proud when he said that he had been accepted as a research scientist at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the US, according to this report in The Hindu. As he came from a family with financial problems, Arun obviously got a lot of attention from the media, as all ‘Zero to Hero’ stories frequently do. The poor, struggling Arun had always been interested in research-based work, artificial intelligence and the search for extraterrestrial life. Such nobility! As if his NASA achievement was not enough, the very honest Arun also said that he is a doctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) doing research under Dr Barbara Lesko in learning theory. Like a cool scientist from Independence Day, Arun also proclaimed that he would be working with US scientists for the search of extraterrestrial life, adding that he would even get his own workstation. And thus, Arun would go to the US and become a scientist studying aliens and live happily ever after. The minor problem, however, is that this entire fairytale narrated by Satyavadi Arun was a blatant lie. According to this report in the Deccan Chronicle, the entire story of NASA, MIT scientist studying aliens so beautifully constructed by Arun was revealed to be a hoax by a senior police officer after he got an input from ‘Netizen police’, a Facebook initiative by the police. Crossing all limits of shamelessness, Arun had even claimed that he had been congratulated by PM Narendra Modi himself and had even talked to former President APJ Abdul Kalam about his ‘projects’. This heroic claim was also revealed to be a lie. In The Hindu report, Arun had said, “I am informed that I will be assigned to the study of Geo-intelligence framework for Astro biological research, a subject that I closely worked during my research proposals.” One cannot help but wonder whether Honest Arun even knew the meaning of the words ‘geo-intelligence framework’ and ‘atro biological research’. Even Arun’s parents admitted that their son was not associated with NASA, according to this Manorama Online report. By claiming that his passport was in the US before his mother later herself produced his passport along with other documents to the police, Arun taught the world how not to make your family proud. The most shocking part of Arun’s story, however, is his motive. Police claim his motive was just to get fame. In other words, Arun cooked up this entire story may be to just be cool in front of girls and tell them that he was a NASA super-scientist who was going to save the world from aliens! Even after all this drama, Arun has still stuck to his claim and said that he would return to the US next month, despite having never been to the US in the first place.  This man has clearly shown the limitlessness of human imagination as he successfully managed to hoodwink an entire country into believing his beautiful lie.