Being confused with someone missing

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I am originally from Russia. I came to United States when I was 14. I eventually got USA citizenship. Right now I am in India because of temporary research positions in Physics (I just finished two year postdoc and currently doing one year visiting position). Otherwise, I am not Indian (I look white), and my background is summed up by Russia and USA.

Anyway, I was walking down the street in India and someone called me over because they had a photo of someone missing and I looked just like that photo. In particular, my hair is very messy and I am poorly shaved (I didn't shave for 3 or 4 days), and the guy on the photo shares both features. I admit though that the guy on a photo also has similar eyes and shape of face as me as well and he smiles in the typical way I smile. But I suspect that probably messy things are the main thing since this is what makes you stand out (and in my case I am not trying to stand out I simply forget to take care of myself: for example I don't shower, either).

Now, I know for the fact that the guy in the photo is NOT me:

1) The guy in the photo is said to be from Australia. I never been to Australia, not even once (NOTE: these guys KNOW he is from Australia since they kept asking me if thats where I was from and I kept repeating to them "no")

2) They also have shown the photos of the parents of that guy. Both of his parents look VERY DIFFERENT from mine

3) I am not "missing", everyone who knows me knows where I am.

Now, I kept trying to tell this to people who stopped me. But all they did was kept looking at me and that picture on the newspaper. Well part of it is that Indians don't understand English very well, and the fact that I have thick Russian accent makes it even harder to understand what I am saying. But I am still pretty confident that they can tell between yes and no. So if I was telling them for 20 minutes that it is not me, I am sure they could understood it.

Also the other thing is that they asked me to write down my name. Now the newspaper is in Hindi so I have no idea what the name of that other guy is. But from simple probability theory I can assume his name is probably not the same as mine, especially since I wrote both my first name AND last name, so I am sure that at least one of these two names would differ. But no, these guys still thought I am the same. So then they asked me to write my parents names. Again I am sure that since that newspaper has photographs of the parents of that guy, it probably shows their names too (algthough again I don't know cause I can't read Hindi). So how come they didn't notice that the names of my parents have NOTHING what-so-ever to do with the names of the parents of that guy?

These people also insisted that I tell them where I live. I told them I live in the dorm on campus. But they couldn't recognize the name of the campus where I work on, even though that campus was like 5 minutes walk from the place they stopped me. They asked me to write it down. Since I am new to this area (like I said first two years I spent doing postdoc in Bangalore and I started visitting position in Chennai just recently) I do'nt remember the street address of campus. Only the name of the school, thats it. So because of this, they drove me to where I live so that they can find it out this way.

How do you make sense of it? Do you think these people think I am lying to them or something? Perhaps I hate my parents so much that I am deliberately "going missing" just so that they won't find me, and thats why I say that these are not my parents? Well, if that is the case, then how about the fact that I HAVE SHOWN THEM MY PASSPORT, and my passport confirms that my name is the same as what I told them it is, and it is CLEARLY DIFFERENT from the name they read in that newspaper? Also my passport clearly says I am from USA, while that guy is from Australia. How do you interpret why they did what they did?

IMPORTANT DETAIL: Apparently one of these people was a security officer (although the first one who called me was not -- he later called a security officer). So if he simply wanted information from me in order to rob me, why would he call a security? Of course it is possible that security itself is corrupt. But at least you should know this important detail. Also since it is security's job I don't see why they would be so stupid as not to see a clear evidence how I am not that guy.

Did the newspaper look legitimate? When I read, it seemed so suspicious the entire time that I couldn't help thinking they keep a lot of pictures of westerners and then match them up when they see them on the street in order to take advantage.

Or it could have been a coincidence blown out of proportion by a couple of language barriers.

Inconclusive by your information, though I cannot help urging you not to get into vehicles with strange people such as these because your safety may be at risk. If they are clearly police or law people, in a government vehicle, then that is another thing. Be careful. I would probably go talk to some long standing administrator at your university about this to see if similar things have happened.

It is impossible to tell since the entire newspaper is in Hindi. One thing I do know, though, is that the newspapers typically read by ppl in my school are all in English, even though ppl in my school are Indians. But at the same time it is also true that some newspapers should be in Hindi too especially since most Indians that are poor are not understanding English. But either way, since I don't know the language there is really no way to judge anything written there. In fact the only way I know the other guy is from Australia is that these ppl kept telling this to me. Otherwise, I won't be able to even read "Australia" given that their alphabet has nothing to do with English.

One sign of ligitimacy though is that the paper on which it is typed is typical to the kind of paper you will see the rest of the newspapers written. So I don't see how they can have access to the "empty" paper of that type in order to type whatever they want on it. I mean, lets say you or me wanted to make this frawd. The only paper available to us is thicker one. So then we will be forced to put photo on a thicker paper (like some of these "missing" notices are). But their paper is actual newspaper. So how were they able to produce it, if it was fake?



Just to clarify, the guy who originally stopped me was rickshaw driver (rickshaw is a three-wheel bicycle that is ran on gas, and it is their job to drive ppl to various places). So basically I take rickshaws on a daily basis whenever I want to go anywhere. And yes it is also quite common when rickshaw drivers would try to stop me themselves even when I don't need a ride because they are desperate to be payed, in which case I say no. Now, this guy tried to stop me in a similar way other rickshaw drivers do. So I first assumed that it is this same thing. But then when I said "no I don't want a ride", all of a sudden he started pestering me with that photo thing and called a lot of people including one security guy. Then all of these ppl talked to me and then at the very end the security guy told me to "take that particular rickshaw" in order to get to my appartment so he can write down my address. And, by the way, I was not charged for the ride.