Mumbai: Rs 1.41 crore stolen in Bollywood-inspired plan

Mumbai: The Charkop police has arrested eight persons for posing as IT officers, and ‘raiding’ a businessman’s house near Kandivali, taking away Rs 1.41 crore, picking him up and then abandoning him in the middle of the road. The accused —in debt after losing a lot of money in lottery tickets — were inspired by the film Special 26. Interestingly, one of the accused is the victim’s nephew who wanted to get even with him for rejecting a loan.

The complainant, Jayantibhai (46), a resident of Atharva Cooperative Housing Society in Charkop saw four ‘IT officers’ swooping down at his house late evening on June 2 and taking away cash and valuables worth Rs 1.41 crore, bundling him in a white Mahindra Xylo and then offloading him in the middle of the road near Jogeshwari. “They then told him to come to the I-T office in south Mumbai with all documents for further investigation. During the raid, the accused posed as I-T officers saying they had information about ill-gotten wealth he had accumulated by evading tax and needed to seize all of it for investigation,” said additional CP (north) Fattehsingh Patil.

Mortified, but later suspicious, Jayantibhai approached the police and revealed what had happened, but initially revealed the amount to be Rs 25 lakh. Upon being probed further, he revealed the real value and cops registered a case and began investigations. In his statement, Jayantibhai, a building contractor, had said most of the money belonged to his business partner Ramjibhai Shah.

“He then spoke about his nephew Jagdish Mewada who had previously borrowed Rs 2 lakh from him and later wanted more money but was denied, leading to an argument between the two. We checked Jagdish’s call data records (CDR) and saw he was in constant touch with Bharat Vegda. Both were picked up for interrogation, following which they confessed to have conned him,” said an officer.

Jagdish revealed that he and the gang first planned to conduct a robbery while sitting at a famous dhaba in Bhiwandi, but decided to pose as I-T officers after watching Special 26 on the TV in the dhaba.

Cops subsequently arrested Jagdish, Bharat, Pankaj Chauhan, Yunus Shaikh, Qadar Shaikh, Balkrishna alias Argam, Bharat Negadia and Paresh Goswami. One more person is being sought. Of these, Pankaj, Yunus, Qadar and Paresh conducted the “raid”, while others stood guard. They have been arrested under charges of kidnapping, theft, trespassing, illegal confinement, criminal intimidation and impersonating a public servant under the IPC.