Ahmedabad accident: Jaguar driver’s father Pragnesh no stranger to criminal cases

Pragnesh, 44, and his son have been arrested under various charges, including culpable homicide not amounting to murder and criminal intimidation.

A real-estate businessman, Pragnesh is no stranger to criminal cases, including gangrape, criminal intimidation, extortion, forgery and attempt to murder. Since 2012, Pragnesh has been involved in at least 13 criminal cases with offences including under the Prohibition Act and under Arms Act.

According to an FIR lodged at Mahila police station (west) in Ahmedabad city on November 3, 2020, he was among the five booked for gangrape and abduction following a complaint by a 22-year-old woman. The survivor, a Rajkot native but a resident of Ahmedabad, alleged that she was repeatedly raped by Pragnesh, first in Septemeber 2020 at Udaipur and later, at Gandhidham when she had travelled with him for work. The survivor also alleged that Pragnesh was blackmailing her with a video of the first rape incident.

Tathya Patel was driving the Jaguar. (Express photo by Nirmal Harindran)

Pragnesh was arrested in the case in November 2020 before the Gujarat High Court released him on regular bail in August 2022.

Records from the High Court revealed that the complainant had later filed another FIR at the Infocity police station on June 9, 2022 against Pragnesh and two unknown persons for allegedly threatening her. She stated that she was threatened by two unknown persons on a motorbike with a knife when she had stepped out for dinner with a friend. The same night around 11 pm, she allegedly started receiving threat calls from Pragnesh who verbally abused her and asked her to settle the gangrape matter.

Another FIR at the Vastrapur police station based on a similar complaint by the same woman on June 17, 2022 alleged more incidents of threat calls to her to settle the matter with Pragnesh.

Notably, in April 2022, in a petition moved seeking quashing of an Ahmedabad sessions court order wherein charges were framed in relation to the gangrape case trial, the HC had quashed the lower court order on technicalities. The HC had remanded the matter back to the sessions court for fresh framing of charges after due procedures.

The order, however, notes the argument of the survivor that Pragnesh and the other accused in the case, since October 2021, have been “trying to delay the trial and have not cooperated with the trial proceedings” in one way or another.

In 2012, an FIR was lodged at the DCB police station in Ahmedabad against him for criminal breach of trust, cheating and forgery. In another FIR lodged at the same police station in 2020, he was booked for criminal conspiracy, extortion and criminal intimidation.

In 2016, an FIR lodged at Mehsana B-division police station accused him of criminal intimidation. At least four other FIRs have been lodged against him in Sola High Court police station, including one in 2017 for attempt to murder, extortion, obscene utterances and abetment, and under the Arms Act.

He was booked under the Prohibition Act in two other FIRs at the Sola High Court police station in 2019. A third FIR in 2020 saw him being charged for criminal breach of trust, cheating, forgery, criminal conspiracy and criminal intimidation.

Pragnesh also faces two other FIRs — one lodged in 2019 and another in 2021 — at Sarkhej police station both on charges of forgery, cheating and criminal conspiracy. Court records showed that the 2021 FIR was for allegedly cheating agriculturists of Rs 3 crore over a land transfer deal.

A 2019 FIR at Shahpur police station has booked him under IPC section 507 (criminal intimidation by anonymous communication). One in Vejalpur police station lodged in 2019 with offences charged under the Arms Act and IPC sections pertaining to criminal breach of trust, criminal conspiracy, cheating and criminal intimidation.