A policeman, along with seven other people are currently under investigation under Pune’s Pimpri Chinchwad Police in India for allegedly kidnapping a man to extort bitcoin worth Rs 300 crore (over $40 million).
The police constable, Dilip Tukaram Khandare, trained in advanced cyber investigation and mobile forensics obtained the information while working in the Pune cyber crime cell that the victim, Vinay Sundarrao Naik, who is a share market trader, had such amount of bitcoin and plotted to kidnap him.
Heading the group of eight, the policeman, who was earlier caught taking a bribe of Rs 10,000 in 2019 and was on supposed duty leave, arranged with his crew and kidnapped the victim from a hotel on 14 January. On the same day, the victim’s friend, Rafiq Alauddin Syed, a 38-year old man lodged a complaint with the Wakad police station reporting that his friend Naik was abducted by 7-8 people in a car.
Following the complaint, an FIR was registered and the police started investigating the case following the direction of Senior Police Inspector Dr Vivek Muglikar, who is in charge of Wakad police station. An FIR or first information report is a document prepared when a criminal or cognizable offense has been carried out. This is usually done by police organizations in South Asian and Southeast Asian countries.
As part of the investigation, technical analysis of the accused’s mobile phone location and CCTV camera footage was carried out and when the accused found that the police were trailing them, they dropped off the victim in Wakad.
When the Police got to the victim, Naik, he revealed that he was kidnapped by eight persons and was threatened to transfer all his bitcoin holdings, worth Rs 300 crore ($40 million), along with an extra Rs 800,000 ($10,694) in cash.
He also identified the alleged perpetrators as Sunil Ram Shinde, Vasant Shyamrao Chavan, Francis Timothy D’Souza, Mayur Mahendra Shirke, Pradip Kashinath Kate, Nico Rajesh Bansal, Shirish Chandrakant Khot, and the constable who was the mastermind behind the kidnap.
The Indian Police, in a related development, had also rescued a dentist, Dr. Behjas Hussain, who was kidnapped at his place of work by a five-person gang, and a ransom of Rs10 crore ($134,377) worth of Bitcoin (BTC) was demanded from the victim’s family.
