Ahmedabad, Mar 26: There are several red faces in officialdom over how alleged conman Kiran Patel, who is now in custody, posed as an official of the Prime Minister’s Office and got the wheels to turn in Jammu and Kashmir for a range of perks, from security to accommodation.
In Gujarat, there were early warnings: at least three FIRs were filed against him for fraud and cheating going back to 2017, and he was arrested in two of these cases. Ironically, the 2017 FIR even alleges that Patel had bragged about his ‘connections with the PMO.’
And yet his visits to Jammu and Kashmir raised few alarm bells — until his arrest last week.
Records reviewed by The Indian Express show that Patel is named in three FIRs: Naroda police station in Ahmedabad (February 24, 2017); Raopura police station in Vadodara (August 8, 2019); and Bayad police station in Aravalli (August 22, 2019).
In all these, he is accused of cheating and issuing cheques that were dishonoured by banks.
In the 2017 FIR, complainant Rahulkumar Parmar, a professional disc jockey, alleged that Kiran Patel’s brother Manish Patel requested Parmar’s father, who worked as a sub-inspector, to lend ‘seven luxurious cars’ worth Rs 1 crore for a religious function.
Parmar was promised Rs 30,000 as wear and tear but Manish went missing when the time came to return the cars, said the FIR. Kiran Patel assured the Parmars that if the cars were not returned, he would ‘pay the market value’ to them.
In the FIR, Parmar said that Kiran Patel claimed he was ‘youth president of the BJP in the country’ and that he had ‘connections in 20 states’ and was a ‘Class I officer in the PMO.’ Kiran Patel and his mother, according to the FIR, visited the Parmars and gave them two cheques of Allahabad Bank: Rs 40 lakh and Rs 38 lakh. But these cheques bounced as the balance in the account of Kiran Patel was just Rs 113, the FIR says.
The FIR named Kiran, Manish, their wives, and ‘Manishbhai’s mother.’ They were booked under Sections 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 406 (criminal breach of trust), and 120 B (criminal conspiracy).
When contacted, Kiran Patel’s lawyer Nisar Vaidhya denied wrong-doing and said that no one had challenged the anticipatory bail the accused had got. Manish Patel, Vaidhya said, was absconding and unavailable for comment.
In the 2019 FIR, however, Kiran Patel and his associate, who runs an event management firm in Ahmedabad, were arrested by Vadodara city police on August 8, 2019, following a complaint by Paritosh Shah, owner of Ahmedabad-based Jain decorators, who had been awarded the work of decoration and lighting of a 2018 garba. According to the FIR, Shah was contracted to work for the garba by Patel and the associate who allegedly owed him Rs 1.5 crore and threatened him with dire consequences when he demanded the outstanding amount. They were booked for criminal breach of trust (406), cheating (420) and criminal intimidation.
However, on November 5, 2020, the Gujarat High Court, while quashing the FIR against Patel, acknowledged that an ‘amicable settlement’ had been reached between the two parties as Shah had submitted an affidavit in August 2019 in the lower court in Vadodara stating that he had received his payment and had ‘no complaints’ against Patel. Shah was not available for comment but a police official said the case wasn’t followed up after the settlement. He declined to give details of the settlement.
The third FIR was filed by Ashish Kumar Patel, a primary school headmaster from Bayad, Aravalli district in August 2019 and accusing Patel, his brother Manish, Manish’s wife and Kiran’s uncle of cheating and other related offences committed in 2015-2016.
According to this FIR, Kiran Patel’s brother and uncle had proposed to the headmaster that they all set up a tobacco business. Between 2015 and 2016, the FIR said, Manish and his wife visited Ashish Patel at least three times in Bayad borrowing in all around Rs 1.75 crore – from Ashish and his acquaintances — against which they gave them cheques of Union Bank of different accounts which bounced.
In September 2019, according to the FIR, Manish and his wife and Kiran Patel reverse-mortgaged their properties and raised Rs 49.33 lakh which was paid back to Ashish’s acquaintances. But the balance was not recovered, the FIR said.
Kiran and his uncle were arrested and served two months in Bayad sub jail before getting bail from the Gujarat High Court in 2020. His lawyer said Manish and his wife are absconding.
On Thursday, a fresh case of fraud of Rs 15 crore was lodged against Kiran Patel and his wife Malini Patel by the Ahmedabad Police after a complaint by Jagdish Chavda, brother of former BJP minister Jawahar Chavda. Both the Patels were accused of cheating on the pretext of renovating Jagdish Chavda’s bungalow.
According to this FIR, too, Patel had told Chavda that he was a ‘Class 1 Officer in the PMO’. The couple were booked under 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).
Asked about action in previous cases against Patel, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Ahmedabad Crime Branch Chaitanya Mandlik told The Indian Express: ‘Police stations will take a call on that. We might also take some action on the cases where he is out on bail or anticipatory bail, once we get custody of Kiran Patel from the J&K authorities.’–(Agencies)
