“He hasn’t been home since March. Ek baar phone kia tha usne…bola tha ki business kar raha hun…”
Surrounded by piles of sarees in the front room of her 1-bhk rented home in Surat’s Punagam area, Manisha Lakkad, 63, who pastes sequins on fabrics for a living, says she is yet to understand why her younger son Chirag is at the centre of a police probe connected with the deaths of an elderly couple hundreds of kilometres away in Karnataka.
Diogjeron Nazareth (83) and his wife Flavia (78) died by suicide in Beedi village in Belagavi district of Karnataka on March 27. Investigators have found that the couple had been facing harassment by cyber criminals disguising as police officers for months. The Nazareths ended up paying almost Rs 60 lakh to the accused.
Karnataka Police’s search led them to Gujarat’s Surat from where, not very far from Manisha’s home, they arrested 26-year-old Chirag on April 14. Police claim a SIM card had been purchased in Chirag’s name and was being misused for harassment and illegal activities.
Following the arrest, Karnataka Police officers rang up Manisha.
“They told me that they have arrested my son in a cheating case. I didn’t understand their language as they were speaking in a mix of Hindi and Kannada. So, I passed the phone to my older son Kalpesh. After some time, the police handed over the phone to Chirag,” she tells The Indian Express.
This was the second time Manisha was talking to Chirag since he left home in March.
“I talked with him for some time. Chirag assured me that he would return home one day,” Manisha, a mother of five, tells The Indian Express.
Manisha’s husband Jivraj, a diamond polisher, died of lung disease four years ago. Her three daughters are married and settled elsewhere. At Punagam, a predominantly Patidar neighbourhood, she lives with her older son Kalpesh on the ground floor of a two-storeyed house in a narrow lane in Dangigav Society.
She earns around Rs 15,000 every month by working on sarees provided by different traders around the city.
“We don’t have the money to go to Karnataka and hire a lawyer. Our first priority is to survive… I cannot put pressure on Kalpesh, given his condition,” says Manisha.
Kalpesh, who has polio in one of his legs, makes a small income by sand-carting. Before he left home, Chirag used to contribute Rs 7,000 to the household’s monthly expenses. Neither Manisha nor Kalpesh is sure what Chirag did to earn the amount, though.
Kalpesh, 32, says Chirag used to sell sarees and women’s dresses online years ago. Later, he switched to online jewellery business — he had learnt jewellery designing at a friend’s shop after Class 12.
But in 2020, he faced a huge loss in the business. “We (Kalpesh and Manisha) had to repay his debts worth Rs 3 lakh. The money lenders used to come home and humiliate us. I scolded Chirag, asking him to stay away from such a business and instead, work hard and earn a living,” says Kalpesh.
It was around this time that Chirag began keeping away from home for longer durations.
“We would call him and inquire of his whereabouts, but he never gave proper answers,” says Kalpesh.
By March 2025, Chirag stopped coming home altogether. He barely made any contact with the family, except for one phone call.
“He said he was staying at a friend’s house,” says Manisha.
Kalpesh says Chirag had always been ambitious and a little extravagant. “He is fond of wearing branded clothes and shoes. Whatever he earned, he spent on these. Many a times, mummy and I asked him to contribute more to the household expenses but he refused.”
The youngest among his siblings, Chirag had got married three years ago. “The couple parted ways mutually,” says Kalpesh, reluctant to divulge more.
Police say that Diogjeron ended up transferring Rs 59.63 lakh to 21 bank accounts across multiple states. The police reached Chirag from an RTGS transaction of Rs 6.1 lakh sent to an account in the name of Balaji Industries. The transaction was traced to a SIM card that Chirag used – it was in the name of Balaji Industries — from where the money was transferred to two other accounts through netbanking.
Police say it looks like Chirag was part of a bigger nexus and was working for a commission.
During investigation, police learnt that the accused, on one occasion, had the Karnataka couple on video call for at least 10 hours at a stretch. “They were able to make the couple transfer at least Rs 59 lakh to 21 different bank accounts online, mostly through Paytm and PhonePe,” says a Belagavi police officer.
Surat Police told The Indian Express that Chirag had no criminal record.
“We don’t know how to get him out of jail. We don’t even know what is the complaint against him,” says Kalpesh.
“We have left it to God,” says Manisha as she gets back to work.
Manisha Lakkad, 63. (Express) 
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