Ahmedabad, Mar 28: He and his wife Malini Patel defrauded the brother of a former BJP minister by promising to renovate his residential property in Ahmedabad, the FIR said.
The wife of Kiran Bhai Patel, an alleged conman who posed as an official from the prime minister’s office, was detained by the Ahmedabad Crime Branch on Tuesday in connection with a Rs 15 crore fraud case, reported The Indian Express.
The case was filed against Malini Patel as well as her husband by Jagdish Chavda, brother of former Bharatiya Janata Party minister Jawahar Chavda on March 22, reported the newspaper.
This is the fourth case against Kiran Bhai Patel. Three cases have been registered against him in different police stations in his home state of Gujarat, involving allegations of criminal breach of trust, cheating and criminal conspiracy.
The first information report in the latest case said that Malini Patel and Kiran Bhai Patel defrauded Chavda of about Rs 15 crore by promising to renovate his residential property in the Shilaj area of Ahmedabad last year. Kiran Bhai Patel had allegedly duped Chavda by claiming to be a Class 1 officer in the prime minister’s office who was connected to a “big Adani project”, the FIR added.
The couple along with an interior designer started the renovation and took Rs 35 lakh from Chavda in installments, reported India Today. As the renovation work started, Chavda went to stay at his friend’s home.
However, he later came to know that the couple had moved into his property and had put up their name plate outside. When Chavda confronted them about this, they allegedly fled with his money without completing the renovation.
The couple has been booked under Indian Penal Code Sections 406 (criminal breach of trust), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 170 (personating a public servant) and 120B (criminal conspiracy).
“Malini Patel was detained on Tuesday morning and we will arrest her in the afternoon,” Crime Branch Deputy Commissioner of Police Chaitanya Mandlik told The Indian Express.
The Jammu and Kashmir Police had arrested Kiran Bhai Patel on March 3 for impersonating an additional director for strategy and campaigns in the prime minister’s office. The authorities said that he got facilities normally given to officials from the prime minister’s office, including a bulletproof car, security personnel and official accommodation at a five-star hotel in Jammu and Kashmir.
He was booked on charges of cheating and forgery on March 2.
Last week, a court in Srinagar had observed that it was “spectacularly evident” that he prima facie forged some documents to deceive not just one person but an “extremely elevated class of the society including high officials of the civil administration and police authorities”.–(The Indian Express)
