Two arrested with unaccounted ₹9.99 crore

Navi Mumbai: Two men have been arrested with unaccounted ₹9

Navi Mumbai: Two men have been arrested with unaccounted ₹9.99 crore, which the duo had procured from several people on the pretext of good returns in Uran.

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The accused have been identified as Satish Vishnu Gawand, 32, and Shashikant Anant Gawand, 34.

Satish Gawand, a resident of Pirkon village of Uran taluka, had convinced several people in Uran and nearby areas to invest money with him.

“He had promised 40% returns within 50 days of investing. The investors did not enquire about the legality of the scheme and started depositing the money,” Pankaj Dahane, deputy commissioner of police, zone II, said.

The police were informed about Gawand’s scheme. However, none was ready to register a case against him. Hence a team was formed under senior police inspector Sunil Patil, who were keeping a close watch on the movements of Gawand and finally nabbed him while he was planning to flee.

The second accused was the driver of the car in which he was fleeing. The duo was intercepted at Khopta Chowk at 10 pm. The police seized 10 traveller suitcases from the car containing the money. “Along with ₹9.99 crore cash, we have freezed ₹9 crore in his bank account,” Dahane added.

A suo motu case against the accused has been registered under the sections of cheating and forgery of the IPC and sections of Prize Chits and Money Circulation Schemes (Banning) Act, 1978 and Banning of Unregulated Deposit Scheme Act, 2019.

“The accused is in police custody for five days and we are investigating if there are any more people involved in this case. We suspect that the accused might have started cheating people six months ago. We are also investigating how many people have fallen prey to this scheme till now,” Patil said. Dahane added that no person or company can run any such financial schemes without RBI’s permission and before investing, one should check about the same. “Whenever one hears of unbelievable returns in any financial scheme, it is a red flag that it is fraud. We would be informing RBI and other agencies as well about the fraud,” Dahane said.