Alleged conman Kiran Patel arrested by the Jammu & Kashmir Police in March for strutting around the hill state with Z+ security cover was brought to Ahmedabad by the Gujarat cops by road in the wee hours of Saturday in connection with four crimes of fraud against him in the State.
Officials of the Ahmedabad Crime Branch arrived around 3 a.m. on Saturday with Patel after a 36-hour grueling road journey in a police vehicle. He was brought here on a transit warrant.
Judicial magistrate granted him to state police custody
A local court remanded him to the custody of the crime branch for seven days against the request of the police for 14 days.
Patel who moved around the sensitive J&K for six months faking himself as a senior official from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) with Z+ security cover was arrested last month and handed over to the Gujarat police on Thursday. A chief judicial magistrate of Srinagar granted him custody to the State police.
Conman, wife booked for duping brother of former Gujarat Minister
The Kashmir police arrested Patel last month but are yet to clarify how he managed to get a Z+ security cover from the Union Home Ministry, nor has the latter issued any public statement about it.
The crime branch had recently booked Patel and his wife based on a complaint by Jagdish Chavda, a resident of the city and brother of former Gujarat minister Jawahar Chavda, who accused the two of duping him of ₹35 lakh on the pretext of renovating his bungalow and illegally taking its possession. His wife has already been arrested in the case.
The couple has been booked under Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 406 (criminal breach of trust), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 170 (personating a public servant) and 120 B (criminal conspiracy).
Patel identified himself as PMO official
According to the first information report (FIR) filed on March 22 at the Detection of Crime Branch police station in Ahmedabad, Chavda, who had put up his bungalow in the city’s Shilaj area for sale, was approached by Kiran Patel and his wife in February last year. Patel won Chavda’s confidence by claiming that he worked at the PMO and that he was also the co-owner of a popular cafe joint in Ahmedabad.
He told him he was also into renovation and building construction and promised to get his house renovated and get it sold at a handsome price. For this, Patel took ₹35 lakh from Chavda in installments. When the renovation work was on, Chavda went to his native Junagadh for some social work. He was shocked to find when he returned that Patel had put his own name plate on the bungalow and had earlier done a house-warming ceremony and party there.
Patel filed civil lawsuit against Chavda
When Chavda confronted him, he vacated the bungalow and promised him to return the ₹35 lakh when he gets paid for a few projects he had bagged from a corporate house. But it was not so easy for Chavda. He was stunned to receive a notice in August last year from the Ahmedabad district court that Patel had filed a civil suit claiming ownership of the property.
Patel had in Kashmir claimed to have been given a mandate by the government to identify buyers for apple orchards in south Kashmir.
