Kasaragod: Goa Police arrested businessman and civil contractor Hafeez Kudroli, accused of swindling Rs 108 crore from his father-in-law Abdul Lahir Hasan, a UAE-based educationist.
A police team led by Goa Crime Branch Inspector Narayan A Chimulkar on Thursday picked Kudroli from Ashok Nagar in Bengaluru, where he has business interests.
Lahir said the Goa Police were acting on his complaint accusing Kudroli of forging a letter from a top Income Tax official to swindle money from him. "Goa Police took action," he said.
Lahir, who runs five schools and construction business in the UAE, filed a detailed complaint against Kudroli with Aluva Police last August 21. The case is being investigated by the Crime Branch of the Kerala Police but the officers have not questioned Kudroli, let alone arrest him.
After marrying Lahir's only daughter Hajera Lahir in 2017, Kudroli allegedly swindled Rs 107.99 crore out of the family between July 2018 and March 2022. He would allegedly cook up stories of big-budget property deals, raids by the Income Tax Department and the Enforcement Directorate, forge documents of these government agencies and property developers, and impersonate celebrities and business owners to rip off the Lahirs.
In this case, Kudroli allegedly shared with the Lahirs a reprimanding letter from the Income Tax Department saying "there is a major discrepancy under the return filed under M/s Kudroli World" and so his four bank accounts with South Indian Bank and HDFC Bank in Bengaluru have been "suspended" pending inquiry.
The letter, riddled with language errors, was written on the letterhead of the "Office of the Principal Chief Commissioner of Income Tax, Karnataka & Goa Region, Bengaluru', had the seal of the office, and was signed by K Meghanath Chowhan, assessment officer CPC Bangalore and Goa.
Lahir told Onmanorama last December that he transferred around Rs 3 crore to Kudroli's bank account to get him out of the tax mess.
Onmanorama had run the letter through a top tax officer in Kerala. She said the letter was bogus. "First, the address is wrong. Second, it has no digital signature, and third, the letter does not have a DIN," she said. "Every document issued by the department should have a document number (DIN). Otherwise, the correspondence is considered invalid," she said.
When Kerala police sat on his complaint, including serious allegations of forgery, Lahir filed a police complaint in Goa. "I filed a police complaint specific to the forged letter in Goa because it was written in the name of an I-T officer of Karnataka and Goa," Lahir said on Friday.
Kudroli was born and brought up in Goa and did his schooling there, he said. He and his accomplice Akshay Thomas Vaidian (38) of The One World, a documentation firm in Kochi, hatched the conspiracy to create the forged letter in Goa, Lahir said.
Vaidian is also an accused in the cases registered in Aluva police station and Goa.
Inspector Chimulkar said Kudroli was charged with forgery and cheating under sections 465, 468, 471, and 420 read with section 34 of the IPC.
Friday afternoon, a court in Ponda granted him bail on the condition that he should appear before the Crime Branch Police at Ribandar for five days from 9 am to 5 pm, said the officer. "The five days' of interrogation will start tomorrow," Inspector Chimulkar said on Friday.
