Dahisar lawyer booked for cheating murder accused’s wife

A lawyer from Dindoshi sessions court in Mumbai has been booked for allegedly forging a magistrate's signature on a fake bail order and cheating a murder accused's wife of ₹90,000.

Mumbai: A lawyer from the Dindoshi sessions court was booked for allegedly forging the signature of a magistrate on a fake bail order of a murder accused and using it to cheat the accused’s wife of ₹90,000.

HT Image

According to crime branch officers, who are investigating the case, the complainant, Satyata Ishwar Naidu, 26, had approached the police in November 2022 after she found out that her husband’s bail order and receipt of the bail bond amount were allegedly forged. Naidu, mother of two, said that in 2021 her husband was arrested by the police on the charge of murder and was lodged in the Thane Central jail. Since then she had been looking for a lawyer to get her husband released on bail.

In August 202, her sister-in-law met a lawyer identified as Hiral Jadhav who assured them that she would get Ishwar Naidu out on bail and for the process, they would have to pay ₹60,000. In October 2022, Jadhav told Satyata that the bail bond by magistrate AV Dhuldhule had kept Naidu’s bail at ₹25,000 which they would have to manage.

Satyata said that she collected the amount and handed it over to Jadhav after which she was given a brown envelope with the bail order and receipt of ₹25,000 from the court.

When Satyata went to Thane jail to get her husband released, she was turned down citing that the bail order was incomplete. When Satyata contacted Jadhav, she went to the jail and informed the complainant that someone had complained against her husband due to which he could get bail.

Jadhav again assured Satyata that she would resolve the matter. In November when Satyata went to court and showed the clerks the receipt, they told her that the receipt was not issued from their end. Satyata then showed the bail order to other lawyers and Ngo working for inmates and undertrials when she found out that the bail order was also fake. “I was asked to go to Dahisar police station and record my statement,” said Satyata, whose husband was released on bail in 2023.

The police have booked Jadhav for cheating and forgery. “Crime branch unit 12 is conducting an investigation in the case at present,” said Pravin Patil, senior police inspector of Dahisar police station.