Mumbai’s externed criminals arrested for extortion in Morbi

The accused with Wankaner police at Morbi, Gujarat

The Morbi local crime branch and Wankaner police (Morbi) have arrested two Goregaon-based accused - externed by the Mumbai police - for allegedly extorting money and conspiring to kidnap a doctor at Morbi in Gujarat. The police said the accused would approach doctors for treatment for a few months and then extort money accusing the doctor of negligence and claiming side effects were caused due to the medicines.

The Morbi local crime branch and Wankaner police arrested eight members of the gang including Sai alias Sunil Sakat and Anil alias Lahania Jimbal who are residents of Santosh Nagar at Film City Gate No. 1 in Goregaon East, Mumbai. The main accused, Ravirajsingh Jadeja who is also a resident of Goregaon, has also been apprehended. The trio is accused of extorting money from a doctor and conspiring to kidnap another one in Morbi, Gujarat.

According to the police, Jadeja, who used to work at a manufacturing company in Goregaon, formed a gang of eight members to carry out extortion schemes targeting doctors in Gujarat. Sakat and Jimbal, who had numerous criminal cases against them in Mumbai for offences such as threatening, extortion, assault and attempted murder, were working at the same company with Jadeja.

The gang's modus operandi involved visiting doctors for medical treatment over a few months, after which they would accuse the doctors of negligence and causing side effects by medicines. They would then threaten to report the doctors to the police if they didn't pay them money.

In recent months, the gang targeted several doctors in Morbi, Ahmedabad, and Surat. The involvement of Sakat and Jimbal in crimes in Mumbai led them to be referred to as ‘tadipaar' (externed) by the police. A police source stated that the incident in Ahmedabad occurred when the gang visited a doctor, complained of side effects, and threatened the doctor. The matter was settled after police intervention and a warning was issued to Jadeja to stop harassing the doctor.

However, the gang had plans to kidnap the doctor and extort money from the family. Last week, the entire gang was seen loitering outside the doctor's clinic in the Morbi area, where the doctor has another clinic. Speaking with mid-day, Dharmistha Kanani, sub-inspector, Wankaner police station, said, "We noticed the accused while on patrol in the Morbi area and suspected their involvement in crime. We took two of them into custody and discovered a pistol, an air gun, six live cartridges, four knives, sticks, and pipes."

According to PSI Kanani, the crime branch was already searching for these accused individuals as they were involved in multiple house-breaking cases in Morbi, Rajkot, and Jamnagar. "After the arrest of two people, six others were apprehended. These gangs operated from Mumbai and other parts of Maharashtra," she said.

08
No of gang members arrested in total