Man held for ‘duping’ people of Rs 10 lakh

The police said that Chanekar, his sister Ruchira Chanekar and friends Anil Kharade, Deepak Badekar, Shivnath Kambli all agreed and paid Nimbalkar a total of Rs. 1.73 in March last year. The police added that they were directed to deposit the money into the account of Nimbalkar’s sister, Indumati Gholap, who lives in Satara.

When Chanekar did not hear from the accused for several months, he asked for his money to be returned, which Nimbalkar allegedly refused to do so. Chanekar then registered a complaint at Azad Maidan police station. In the meantime, Gholap returned Rs. 40,000 to Chanekar, pleading with him not to approach the police and offered to return the rest of the money, the police said.

An officer at Azad Maidan police station said that further investigations revealed that Nimbalkar had similarly cheated several family members of Chanekar’s friend Jayashree Subedi. He added that Nimbalkar had made similar promises last year to four of Subedi’a relatives, who paid him Rs. 3.27 lakh. Upon probing further, Subedi’s family led the police to Chembur resident Sachin Bhosale, who had allegedly accepted their money on Nimbalkar’s behalf.

Bhosale, the police said, claimed that Nimbalkar had cheated his five of his family members of Rs. 5.60 lakh on the pretext of getting them jobs. “It became clear then that the accused was running a very big racket,’ said the officer.

Having obtained IMEI numbers of two cell phones that Nimbalkar was known to use, the police traced one of them to Pune, where they arrested him on March 21. Soon after, they arrested his sister, Gholap.

However, their lawyer, advocate Sunil Pandey said that they had been falsely implicated in a civil dispute. “No role has been attributed to them that would induce them to be charged with cheating. The accused have already returned Rs. 40,000 and the police has not put forward copies of bank account statements to prove that the transactions had been made,” he argued.