Malini Patel, the wife of alleged conman Kiran Patel, was detained by the Ahmedabad Crime Branch on Tuesday morning in a Rs 15 crore fraud case filed against the couple by the brother of a former BJP minister on March 22, Indian Express reported.
“Malini Patel was detained on Tuesday morning and we will arrest her in the afternoon,” Crime Branch Deputy Commissioner of Police Chaitanya Mandlik said.
Kiran is still in judicial custody in Jammu and Kashmir, where he is accused of posing as an official from the Prime Minister’s Office, based on which he enjoyed a range of perks, from security to accommodation. Last week, Hitesh Pandya, the additional public relations officer in Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel’s office, resigned after his son was questioned by the J&K police for his links to Patel.
On March 22, Jagdish Chavda, brother of former Gujarat minister Jawahar Chavda, had filed an FIR at the Detection of Crime Branch police station in Ahmedabad, naming Kiran and Malini for defrauding him of about Rs 15 crore in the name of renovating his residential property in the Shilaj area of Ahmedabad in 2022. This is the fourth FIR against Kiran in Gujarat.
The couple was booked under sections 406 (criminal breach of trust), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 170 (personating a public servant) and 120 B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code.
According to the FIR, Kiran had won Chavda’s trust by claiming to be a “Class 1 Officer in the PMO” who was connected to a “big Adani project”. The FIR quotes that Kiran had told Chavda that he has a “large political stature” and has “experience in renovating bungalows and buildings”.
According to Malini’s advocate Nisar Vaidhya, an anticipatory bail application had been filed. “The hearing was on Tuesday morning. But before the matter was taken up in the court, the police had taken her,” Vaidhya said.
Earlier, DCP Mandlik had told The Indian Express, “We have emailed a notice to the jail authorities in Jammu and Kashmir (for the custody of Kiran Patel) on Sunday. We will take him into custody after 7-8 days.” Mandlik also said that the Ahmedabad court had ordered that the authorities in J-K should be informed seven days prior to the arrest.
