Indian Court Gives 11 Cops, Ex-Legislator Life for Bitcoin Extortion

• Indian court jails 14, including ex-MLA and police chief, for 2018 Bitcoin kidnapping.
• Businessman Shailesh Bhatt was abducted and forced to transfer Bitcoin worth over $150,000.
• Case exposes misuse of power in crypto crimes involving top officials and law enforcement.

An Indian anti-corruption court has thrown the book at 14 individuals, including senior police officials and a former legislator, sentencing them all to life in prison for a 2018 Bitcoin extortion plot. The crew was found guilty of abducting a local businessman in Gujarat to get their hands on his crypto stash, marking one of the highest-profile cases of official corruption in India’s crypto history.

Among those convicted are Jagdish Patel, a former district superintendent of police, and Nalin Kotadiya, a former legislator from India’s ruling party, the BJP, along with eleven other police officials.

Corrupt Officials Plotted to Extort 752 Bitcoin from a Local Businessman

The story goes back to February 11, 2018, when a team of police officers led by crime branch inspector Anant Patel abducted Surat-based businessman Shailesh Bhatt. They illegally detained him at a farmhouse, beat him, and forced him to admit he held 752 Bitcoin that were linked to the infamous BitConnect Ponzi scheme.

Investigators found that Bhatt was trying to recover his own funds from the BitConnect collapse, which ultimately made him a target. The corrupt officials demanded he hand over both cash and the crypto. When negotiations failed, they forced him to liquidate 34 Bitcoin from an associate’s wallet, extorting around $150,000 at the time.

Court Delivers Life Sentences for Unprecedented Abuse of Power

The ruling is a rare case of a major crypto crime leading to the conviction of high-ranking law enforcement and political figures in India. The court cited criminal conspiracy, kidnapping for ransom, and physical assault as the basis for the life sentences, stressing the severity of the group’s misuse of authority.

The verdict brings to fore the hard line Indian courts are taking on crypto-related crime, viewing it as a “threat to the financial system.” At the same time, the country’s regulatory approach is becoming more nuanced, with recent rulings preventing authorities from imposing blanket freezes on accounts in fraud cases.