Loan recovery agent arrested for abetting suicide of Malad resident

Mumbai: The police on Monday seized four mobile phones from loan shar who was arrested from Rajasthan on Sunday in connection with the suicide case of Sandeep Koregaonkar, who hanged himself after repeated harassment from loan recovery agents

Mumbai: The police on Monday seized four mobile phones from loan shar who was arrested from Rajasthan on Sunday in connection with the suicide case of Sandeep Koregaonkar, who hanged himself after repeated harassment from loan recovery agents.

The accused, identified as Raju Bhanwarlal Khadaw, was presented before the court on Monday where he was remanded in police custody for two days. The 22-year-old Khadaw was traced by the officers with the help of his call data records.

Dattaguru Koregaonkar, the deceased’s elder brother said that they were aware of the progress made by the Mumbai police but nothing has been communicated to them. “The police are not telling us anything. I have been making rounds of the police station every day,” said Dattaguru (39).

The crime branch officers handed over Khadaw to the Kurar police on Monday.

“We have seized four mobile phones from Khadaw and have sent them for forensic analysis to scrutinize the Whatsapp chats as we suspect that he might have threatened more people like Koregaonkar,” said a police officer from Kurar police station.

“We also want to find out Khadaw’s role in blackmailing Koregaonkar and the names of his accomplices as Koregaonkar had been getting calls from four numbers,” said the officer.

Koregaonkar (38) who worked at an imitation jewellery manufacturer had contacted his elder brother Dattaguru on April 24 saying that he had not taken any loan but recovery agents had been harassing him by abusing him and threatening him to pay back the loan despite repeatedly saying that he had not taken any loan.

Dattaguru (39) said that despite registering an FIR the harassment did not stop and a few days later all his friends from Kurar and women colleagues received the morphed nude photo of Koregaonkar accusing him of raping and killing a 12-year-old girl.

Irritated with the harassment, Sandip killed himself.

“If the police would have acted earlier, my brother would have been alive,” said Dattaguru.

“We have got the custody of Khadaw and we will question him to find out more about the loan app and who was he working for,” said Somnath Gharge, deputy commissioner of police (zone 12).