Gujarat: Five senior cops among 19 booked in kidnapping, extortion case of Kutch firm staffer
Bhuj, Feb 17: Two superintendents of police (SPs) and three other senior policemen are among 19 persons against whom a case has been registered in connection with the kidnapping and extortion of an employee of a firm in Gujarat's Kutch district, police said on Saturday.
The Crime Investigation Department (CID) on Thursday registered an FIR against two SPs, three DySPs, a sub-inspector, and owners of Electrotherm Limited, among others, nearly a month after the Supreme Court lifted the stay on the Gujarat High Court order directing the probe agency to do the same, they said.
According to a release issued by the CID, Parmanad Seerwani, a resident of Gandhidham in Kutch district, lodged a police complaint against two company owners and 11 others for kidnapping and extortion committed in December 2015.
The probe agency, in the release, did not disclose the exact roles of the accused police officers, citing that it would affect the investigation.
Former Kutch (East) SPs GV Barot and Bhavna Patel and DySPs RD Desai, DS Vaghela and VJ Gadhvi, and sub-inspector N K Chauhan have been named in the FIR, the release stated.
The complainant worked at Electrotherm Limited in 2011 and later tendered his resignation, which was repeatedly rejected by company owners Shailesh Bhandari and Anurag Bhandari.
The Bhandaris were accused of allegedly kidnapping the complainant when he refused to become the firm's director after trying to resign unsuccessfully, the release said.
In December 2015, Seerwani was allegedly kidnapped and held captive in the company bungalow in Ahmedabad, where he was forced to sign blank papers to give away his properties, along with cash and gold worth lakhs, it said.
A case has been registered against the accused under sections 406 (criminal breach of trust), 420 (cheating), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 347 and 348 (wrongful confinement and extortion), and 364 (kidnapping to murder), among other relevant provisions of the Indian Penal Code and Arms Act, the release said.
The complainant and his wife had approached the concerned authorities between December 6, 2015 and February 4, 2016 to get an FIR registered against the accused, it said.
However, when no action was taken, they moved the high court for directions to register an FIR, it said.
In its order dated October 10, 2019, the high court directed the authorities to register an FIR, but the accused got a stay from the Supreme Court. The stay was lifted on January 16 this year, the release said.
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Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
