Journalism of Courage
In the latest development in the Sukesh Chandrashekar extortion case, a Delhi court on Tuesday (November 15) granted bail to Bollywood actor Jacqueline Fernandez. Fernandez has been accused of receiving gifts from the conman, who is lodged in a Delhi jail in a Rs 200 crore cheating case involving the wife of a former Fortis Healthcare promoter.
Chandrashekar’s case has gotten attention for featuring famous people and high-value gifts. But before this too, he was alleged to have been a part of several crimes across major Indian cities, carried out by impersonating a bureaucrat and pretending to be a grandson of former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi.
He has been in and out of jail since 2017, when he was arrested for allegedly taking money from AIADMK rebel T T V Dinakaran to bribe an Election Commission official and has around 30 FIRs to his name across multiple cases.
Fernandez’s arrest relates to her allegedly receiving expensive gifts from Chandrashekar – who is believed to have got the money for these gifts through various cons, including cheating a Delhi woman of Rs 200 crore in 2021.
The actor’s lawyer argued on Tuesday that the Enforcement Directorate’s earlier charge sheet and a supplementary charge sheet did not mention Fernandez as an accused. The Special Public Prosecutor, however, earlier argued she only cooperated with the investigation when shown the evidence. She has claimed innocence in the case.
In 2021, former Fortis Healthcare promoter Shivinder Singh’s wife Aditi Singh lodged an FIR with the Delhi Police, claiming she was cheated of Rs 200 crore by a man posing as the “law secretary”, who promised to help with her husband’s cases if she contributed to the “party fund”.
She also alleged the man again called from a landline — which the Truecaller phone number detection app displayed as the number of a senior official of the Prime Minister’s Office — and asked her to visit the party office or Delhi’s North Block, the centre of high-level government offices, to meet the former law minister or the current Home Minister.
A case of extortion and impersonation was registered with the Special Cell and he was arrested. Police later transferred the case to the Economic Offence Wing (EOW) and made more arrests, adding sections of the stringent Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA).
He was allegedly paying Rs 1.5 crore every month for a separate barrack in the jail and getting to freely use mobile phones. Based on documents, facts and evidence collected during the probe, the Delhi Police concluded that the money was paid as a bribe to all staff, irrespective of their duties, to ensure they remained silent. An FIR was registered against Sukesh and 82 jail staff, and eight jail officials were arrested.
According to the police investigation, Sukesh is from a lower-middle-class background. He was forced out of school around the time he was in Class 10. Over time, he became interested in the lifestyle of affluent students in his school in Bangalore. At the age of 17, he engaged in his first con, claiming he had permission to drive in the state despite not being an adult, showing forged government documents to prove this.
Sukesh constantly shifted where he lived – from Chennai to Kolkata to Delhi to Mumbai – as FIRs were filed against him for new cases. Along with his wife Maria, he allegedly convinced a couple who had a business in Chennai that they would be awarded a Rs 132 crore contract for dispensing sanitary napkins around Karnataka if they made an initial investment of Rs 19 crore. The couple obtained a bank loan and transferred the funds to private accounts as mentioned by Sukesh, who had been posing as a Karnataka-cadre IAS officer.
His parents too had been arrested with him in 2007 and 2011 in cheating cases.
According to a senior police officer in Chennai, part of why he was never detected despite the people he deceived was because “He was someone with an eye for the vulnerabilities of the Indian system, be it corrupt politicians, ambitious celebrities or crony industrialists,” the officer told The Indian Express.
