On Thursday, there was a flurry of activity in Jhunjunu as Laxmi Narayan Meena, the local middleman, raced across the district requesting his community’s “volunteers” to support him, closely followed by a team of the Delhi Police Economic Offences Wing.

One finally caught up with Meena in the office of a vernacular newspaper, where he was distributing press releases in an attempt to absolve himself of all knowledge and criminal intent.

Meanwhile, members of the Meena community who had filled the DDA application forms maintained that Laxmi Narayan had told them of the DDA scheme.

“Meenaji came to me in August and told me of the lottery. He told me I would not have to pay a single rupee and that I only had to sign on application forms and give him identity proof and that of my ST status,” said an unemployed Rameshwar Meena, who has been allotted a flat.

Laxmi Narayan took a photocopy of his ration card, caste certificate and voter identity card. Rameshwar hails from Togda Kalan village, from where eight Meenas had applied and four have been allotted flats.

“I did not pay any money to anybody. Meenaji said that his friends would take care of it. I knew I was allotted a flat only after my name appeared in a vernacular newspaper,” Rameshwar claims. He did not even have the Rs 5,680 required for registration nor did he have the Rs 1.5 lakh needed to enter the scheme.

“What will I do with a flat in Delhi when my life is here? Meenaji said some others would be willing to pay me money for that flat. What is wrong in getting something for free?” asked Rameshwar, a father of three, who rears goats for a living.

Laxmi Narayan Meena claimed he was being framed. “No document was forged and nobody was coerced. I wanted to help people from my community and when some people from Delhi asked me to get volunteers, I agreed,” Laxmi Narayan said. He added that from Jhunjunu alone he managed to send 200 applications to the DDA, of which 11 people were allotted flats.

When asked about why the 11 were not informed of the allotment, Meena said, “That is what I was doing on Thursday — telling people they had won and that they now had to pay the remaining amount.”

On reading about the scam in the media and realising he had been allotted a flat, Sawarmal Meena from Singhana village, who worked in a mill in Gwalior before returning to Rajasthan five years said, “It is easy to fool poor people like us. We are always looking for ways to improve our lives and rich people are always looking for ways to exploit us. ”