Four victims of multi-crore scam abduct CA to recover lost money

Police arrest four individuals who kidnapped a chartered accountant in an attempt to recover money lost in a Ponzi scheme. The accountant had convinced acquaintances and relatives to invest in the fraudulent company. The kidnappers demanded a ransom of ₹5 crore ($710,000). Two of the accused were found with the victim after a five-day search, while the other two were apprehended separately. The four are now in police custody.

Strap: A police team arrests quartet after five days of search and rescues CA, who was attached to the fraud company

Four victims of multi-crore scam abduct CA to recover lost money

It was like a copy of the script from a highly rated crime show on television. From staking out their target’s house for days to keeping tabs on his daily schedule for a month, they did pull off an abduction and left no trail for police to swoop down on them.

However, the long arm of the law eventually caught up with them.

Last Wednesday, four white-collar job holders, who, in their last-ditch effort to recover the hard-earned money they had lost in a Ponzi scheme two years ago, kidnapped the only person they got their hands on – the charted accountant (CA), outside his office in Chandivali.

According to the police, Bhushan Arora was associated with the firm, the alleged perpetrator of the fraud. The quartet made three ransom calls to his wife Megha and demanded ₹5 crore in ransom.

“During investigation, we got to know that Arora had convinced many of his acquaintances and relatives into investing in Divine Power Group. All of them faced big losses in the stock market due to this. Even the person who made the ransom calls had told the family that he and his accomplices had lost money because of Arora,” said Datta Nalawade, deputy commissioner of police, zone 10.

The scam in which Arora’s name has been embroiled is allegedly a Ponzi scheme in which at least 3,200 investors have lost ₹1,000 crore. Two FIRs have been registered in the matter - one in Thane’s Wagle Estate police station and the other in Kalamboli police station in Navi Mumbai. Twelve directors of different companies from the conglomerate have been named as accused in those cases, and all of them are on the run, police officers said.

The four accused collectively lost more than ₹2 crore in the scam and part of the money was borrowed from others, Nalawade said and added they blamed Arora, as he was the only traceable person. Nalawade said Arora’s words gained more credibility among investors due to his past experiences as a wealth manager in Abu Dhabi and the fact that he had handled big-ticket projects before.

A kidnapping case was registered against unknown persons at Powai police station on Friday. Nalawade said he immediately formed 12 teams consisting of 65 personnel.

Explaining the chain of events leading to the abduction, assistant police commissioner Vinayak Mer said the accused were inspired by television crime dramas based on true events.

“They did a very thorough job of not leaving behind any trail. They carried out a recce to learn about Arora’s daily schedule for almost a month. The car they used had a number plate of another car of the same model that was listed for sale at an online marketplace. The abduction itself was done at a blind spot out of reach of CCTV cameras,” he said.

The planning was so impeccable that the police were confused about their location. “Three ransom calls were made from different locations. We later learnt that they used public transport to reach different spots from where they had made the calls,” senior police inspector Jitendra Sonavane said.

In the absence of much technical evidence, the police had to depend on traditional means of investigation, he added.

Under the guidance of Nalawade, Mer and Sonavane, a team consisting of inspector Ganesh Patil, assistant inspector Santosh Kamble, assistant inspector Vinod Lad and sub inspector Sudhir Pilane among others worked round the clock. Some of them did not even go home.

On Sunday night, based on local intelligence, the police team raided a farmhouse in Panvel and found two of the accused along with the abducted CA who had been there for the last five days. The other two accused were caught the next day from different parts of the city, a police officer said.

The four have been identified as Amol Mhatre, 41, Niranjan Singh, 32, Vidhichandra Yadav, 31, and Mohammad Suleman Sheikh, 20.

They were produced before a metropolitan magistrate court on Tuesday which remanded them in police custody for three days.