The Ghatlodia police on August 29 booked six persons for cheating and incurring financial losses to the Union government through unscrupulous transactions. The income tax department had slapped notices on the accused over suspicious banking deposits of Rs 631.50 crore over a year ago. However, this is not an isolated case. Gujarat has seen multiple cases of fraud in the last few months.
Ghatlodia resident, Dharak Patel, had approached city police commissioner Sanjay Srivastava in January 2021 seeking a probe into a cheating case. He had alleged that his cousin Rutul Patel, a resident of Memnagar, had made a fake agent card of Unjha APMC (Agriculture Produce Market Committee) for Dharak.
Rutul promised a commission of Rs 10,000 per Rs 1 crore sale in Unjha APMC in February 2020. Later, Dharak received Rs 129.95 crore in his bank account from unknown sources, Inspector YR Vaghela of Ghatlodia police stated in the FIR.
During the probe, the cops found that Dharak was also aware of the fraud. He was also made an accused.
Similarly, Rutul had met Yogesh Modi and Uday Mehta, both residents of Thaltej, in August 2020 and convinced them to become agents for Unjha APMC. Following the same modus operandi, Rs 241.41 crore was transferred to Yogesh’s account.
Rutul later rented an office in a commercial complex in Hebatpur in the name of his two aides Chinmay Patel and Maulik Parekh. The FIR stated that Rs 9.49 crore were deposited in Chinmay’s bank account in July 2020, and Dharak deposited Rs 260 crore in Maulik’s account in 2020.
In January 2021, the I-T department began an inquiry into the case.
