Maharashtra / 4 more cheating complaints against NCB witness Gosavi, 2 FIRs filed

Pune: The Pune City Police received four more complaints of cheating against Kiran Gosavi, the self-styled detective cited as an “independent witness” by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) in the drugs-on-cruise case which led to the arrest of Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan Khan.

Gosavi was arrested by the police on Thursday in a 2018 cheating case lodged in Faraskhana police station in the city. A court then remanded him to police custody till November 5 for further investigation.

While seeking his custody, police had told the court that Gosavi was a “notorious job racketeer” who may have cheated several unemployed young men on false assurances of providing them jobs in foreign countries.

Pune police commissioner Amitabh Gupta said that four more persons from within Pune Police jurisdiction have filed complaints of cheating against Gosavi and based on it, two first information reports (FIRs) are being lodged at the Lashkar and Wanwadi police stations.

“The complaints are of similar crime involving cheating as is the case with Deshmukh’s complaint,” said an officer.

After his arrest, the Pune Police had urged people to come forward if they were cheated by Gosavi.

Earlier, the FIR at Faraskhana police station was lodged by a hotel management graduate Chinmay Deshmukh (24), resident of Kasba Peth in Pune, on May 29, 2018.

According to the FIR, Gosavi had posted an advertisement about hotel management jobs on social media platforms, which spurred Deshmukh to get in touch with him and later visit his Mumbai office. Gosavi allegedly assured Deshmukh about providing a job at a hotel in Malaysia and then asked him to transfer Rs 3.09 lakh to a bank account, citing various reasons, between November 2017 and March 2018. However, Gosavi neither offered a job to Deshmukh nor returned the money. Based on Deshmukh’s complaint, police had then booked Gosavi in this case under sections 419, 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code and sections of the Information Technology Act.

As cops failed to arrest Gosavi in the past, he was declared absconder in this case by the court in 2019. But Gosavi’s selfie with NCB case accused Aryan Khan went viral on social media. Questions were then raised about Gosavi’s presence at the NCB’s high profile cruise ship raid on October 2. Pune city police had then issued a look out circular against Gosavi on October 13, to prevent him from leaving the country. On October 18, cops arrested his assistant Sherbano Qureshi from Govandi, Mumbai, alleging that money in the cheating case went into her account. Police sources said that Gosavi’s office in Mumbai will be searched during investigation.

Meanwhile, Gosavi was also named in four other cheating cases lodged in Thane, Mumbai and Palghar. Also, Pune police have found that the SIM card in his possession was procured in the name of one ‘Sachin Siddheshwar Sontakke’ by allegedly submitting fake documents. Gosavi had also lived in various cities including Lucknow, Kanpur, Hyderabad, Solapur, Satara and Vijapur, allegedly using the fake name ‘Samit Patil’.