4 more arrested for helping conman operate cheating racket

The four arrested suspects -- identified as Kamlesh Kothari, Joel Jose Matthews, Arun Muthu, and B Mohan Raj -- and actress Leena Maria Paul, the wife of the alleged conman Sukesh Chandrashekhar, were produced before a Delhi court that sent them to police custody for further interrogation in the case.

A day after actress Leena Maria Paul was arrested for allegedly helping her husband, Sukesh Chandrashekhar, pull off a multi-crore cheating and extortion racket from inside the Tihar prison complex, Delhi Police on Monday said they arrested four more Chennai-based associates of the couple, taking the total number of arrests in the case to 13.

Actress Leena Maria Paul was arrested on Sunday for allegedly helping her husband, Sukesh Chandrashekhar, run the operation.

The four arrested suspects -- identified as Kamlesh Kothari, Joel Jose Matthews, Arun Muthu, and B Mohan Raj -- and Paul were produced before a Delhi court that sent them to police custody for further interrogation in the case. While Paul, Muthu and Raj have been sent to police custody for 15 days, the others will remain with the police for a week.

Police told the court that Paul was required to be taken to Mumbai and other states like Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala for recovery and verification of several properties purchased from the proceeds of crime.

According to police, Kothari is a real estate agent who helped the couple buy a bungalow in Chennai, Matthews is Paul’s manager and Muthu helped the couple buy luxury cars. Raj is a lawyer by profession and has been representing Chandrashekhar in his cases for a long time, said a senior police officer in the Economic Offences Wing (EOW), which is probing the cheating and extortion case.

Police recently also invoked stringent provisions of the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) against Chandrashekhar and the others.

Chandrashekhar, an alleged conman and an accused in 21 cases, is already in police custody since Saturday, when the court granted his custody to the EOW for 16 days. Police said Chandrashekhar, who was already in Tihar jail, was allegedly running the cheating and extortion racket in connivance with jail officials and some associates outside.

The arrests pertain to investigation into a complaint, alleging duping of several crores, filed by Aditi Singh, the wife of former promoter of Religare Enterprises Shivinder Mohan Singh, who was arrested in October 2019 in a case related to alleged misappropriation of funds at Religare Finvest Ltd. Chandrashekhar and his associates reportedly took money from her after posing as government officials and promising to get bail for her husband.

Police suspect Chandrashekhar also allegedly duped the wife of Shivinder’s brother Malvinder Singh who is also currently in jail. It is not clear if a separate case was registered by the EOW on the complaint of Malvinder’s wife.

Apart from the EOW, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has also been looking into the case.

ED officials had recently conducted raids at Chandrashekhar’s sea-facing bungalow in Chennai and had found a fleet of 16 luxury cars worth crores of rupees.

“Investigators will confront the arrested persons with each other to know how exactly they pulled off the multi-crore cheating and extortion racket and assess their roles. More arrests are likely in the case,” said another police officer, privy to the developments in the case.