On Friday, a 45-year-old south Mumbai businessman was arrested by the anti-extortion cell (AEC) of the Mumbai crime branch for allegedly duping a woman of Rs 95 lakh. The businessman duped the woman of gold jewellery worth Rs 85 lakh and cash worth Rs 10 lakh.
According to Hindustan Times, the accused businessman was identified as Ali Aziz Madani. The accused met the woman at an upmarket Bandra club in 2017, where he told her that he exported processed food to other countries. The accused also told the woman that he needed a loan for his business, and that is when the victim gave Madani her gold ornaments worth Rs 85 lakh. After receiving the gold ornaments, Madani mortgaged them with Jayesh Choksi, a jeweller who runs a shop in Kalbadevi.
A crime branch official told the leading daily, “Madani told the victim that he had mortgaged her gold ornaments and taken a loan. However, he said he required Rs 10 lakh to release her gold ornaments. After the victim gave him Rs 10 lakh, he started avoiding her calls.” After a year, when the victim again asked Madani to return the gold ornaments, Madani initially told her that he would return them, but later threatened the woman to reveal their friendship to the victim’s husband if she continued to call him.
The scared woman then narrated the entire incident to her family in February this year and approached the crime branch. After this, a case of extortion and cheating against Madani was registered at Bandra police station. After the case was registered, Madani approached sessions court seeking anticipatory bail but it was rejected. Last week, he approached the Bombay High Court, where the court gave him four days to return the woman’s jewellery, but he failed and his application was rejected. A inspector Ajay Sawant of the anti-extortion cell (AEC) told the Hindustan Times, “The accused was absconding and we got a tip-off that he was in Gujarat. A police team started searching for him and arrested him from Surat on Friday. He was later brought to Mumbai.” The accused was produced in the court and remanded to police custody till July 10.
