In a landmark verdict, an Indian court in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, has sentenced 14 individuals to life imprisonment, including a former district superintendent of the Indian Police Service (IPS) and a former member of the state legislative assembly, in relation to the 2018 kidnapping and extortion of a businessman for his digital assets.
Special Judge B.B. Jadav found the 14 people guilty of criminal conspiracy, kidnapping for ransom, illegal detention, and assault, according to a report by The Times of India.
Of the guilty, 11 were former police officials, including former Amreli district superintendent of police Jagdish Patel. They were joined by former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA), Nalin Kotadiya, and two others. All 14 defendants were convicted under India’s Prevention of Corruption Act for criminal misconduct by public servants and sentenced to life imprisonment, in addition to being fined.
The crime was the latest domino in a sordid string of criminal activity dating back to 2016.
The victim in this case, builder and digital asset trader Shailesh Bhatt, was actually the perpetrator in a previous case, in which he allegedly extorted a large sum of Bitcoin and cash from two employees of digital asset firm Bitconnect Coin.
Bitconnect Coin was a purported digital currency investment platform founded in 2016 by Indian-born Satish Kumbhani. Based in India but operating globally, it reached a market capitalization of $3.4 billion at its peak. However, in reality, authorities said Bitconnect was a classic Ponzi scheme that functioned by paying earlier investors with money from later ones, while allowing Kumbhani and his co-conspirators to accrue approximately $2.4 billion from the unsuspecting investors.
In 2022, Kumbhani was indicted by the United States Department of Justice (DoJ) for his part in the scam and remains a fugitive.
Bhatt had invested in Bitconnect Coin before Kumbhani abruptly closed the platform in January 2018. After the Ponzi was revealed, in an attempt to recover his investment, Bhatt allegedly kidnapped two of Kumbhani’s former employees and extorted digital assets from them for their release, including 2,256 BTC, 11,000 Litecoins, and Rs 14.50 crore ($2.1 million).
When former IPS superintendent Patel and ex-Gujarat state MLA Kotadiya—the two most prominent perpetrators of the most recent episode in this series of interconnected crimes—learned about Bhatt’s actions, they reportedly devised their own extortion plan.
After allegedly kidnapping, beating, and intimidating him, the co-conspirators allowed Bhatt to go free after they extorted him for Rs 1.32 crore ($159k), which he funded by selling 34 BTC from the wallet of a business partner.
Once released, Bhatt reported the kidnapping and extortion to the state police, which resulted in an investigation into the 14 co-conspirators, an eventual trial, and the landmark sentences. For his own crimes, Bhatt was arrested in August 2024 and remains behind bars.
After awarding life sentences to all 14 perpetrators, the court reportedly declared that “widespread corruption among public servants and private persons is required to be curbed with a strong hand by all, and certainly, the verdict of the court has greater magnitude than other means.”
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Source: https://coingeek.com/14-sentenced-to-life-in-prison-in-india-for-digital-asset-extortion/