Two arrested for duping Ghatkopar bizman of 96 L | news from mumbai

MUMBAI: The Anti-Extortion Cell (AEC) of the crime branch has arrested two accused from Chennai in a ₹96 lakh fraud case involving Ghatkopar businessman. The accused cheated him of the amount under the pretext of helping him to get a loan of ₹20 crores at a lower interest rate. However, after taking the money, they could not give the loan to the applicant.

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Two arrested for duping Ghatkopar bizman ₹96L

The arrested accused – identified as VM Mohammed Dawood alias Satish Sriram alias Satwik Chandrasekhar, 32, and Thiru Vijayakumar alias Viji alias Kumar alias Ganapathi Vijayakumar, 47 – are both residents of Chennai.

Police officers said Dawood is the main accused in the case where the police had earlier arrested three persons, identified as Karthik Ravikumar alias R Karthik alias Kishore Srinivasan, 33, in December 2023, and Vicky Durairaj Nayker, 27, in January 2024 and Sriram alias Narasimhan Ramdas, 44, in February this year. The trio is in judicial custody.

Two more suspects – Syed Mazhar and Mohammad Irfan Jafar – are still at large, a police officer said. He added that 15 cases are registered against the accused in Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai and Jharkhand.

Dawood and Thiru were produced in court on Thursday and remanded in police custody till November 28.

According to the police, the 48-year-old complainant works in software and has an office in Phoenix Market City, Kurla West. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, he was seeking a loan to run his business when he came in contact with one Kamlesh K through a social media app.

Kamlesh introduced them to the other accused who claimed to be in gold business and also in financial business. The accused visited the complainant’s office, picked up and verified the documents for the loan. Initially, the loan amount was fixed at ₹50 million, but later the amount was reduced to ₹20 million and the brokerage amount was calculated at ₹98 thousand which the accused asked him to pay through Demand Draft (DD), the police officer said.

The incident took place between August 11 and September 3, 2021. The complainant visited the office of the accused in Chennai and gave two DDs of ₹50 lakh and ₹46 lakh and paid extra ₹2 lakh in cash,

After collecting the DD, the accused transferred the money to their own bank accounts, said Police Inspector Sudhir Jadhav of the AEC. The main accused VM Mohammad Dawood initially gave several excuses that someone died in his family due to which the loan amount was delayed, but later he stopped taking calls from the complainant and changed his mobile numbers.

The complainant then approached the Ghatkopar police and on the basis of his complaint, a case under Sections 406, 420, 120(b), 34 of the Indian Penal Code was registered against the accused. The case has been transferred to the AEC for investigation.