Well, it’s not every day you see a former politician and a group of police officers brought down by a bitcoin scheme. But that’s exactly what happened in a Gujarat court today. A life sentence for fourteen people involved in a pretty brazen kidnapping and extortion plot from back in 2018.
A Landmark Verdict Reached
The court in Ahmedabad finally delivered its judgment, ending a trial that’s dragged on for years. Nalin Kotadiya, who used to be a BJP legislative assembly member, was among those convicted. So was a former Indian Police Service officer, Jagdish Patel. Twelve others got the same sentence—life. One person was acquitted, though details on that are still a bit thin. The whole thing feels like a messy, real-world crime drama, doesn’t it?
The Kidnapping That Started It All
It all started with a businessman from Surat, Shailesh Bhatt. He was into cryptocurrency, which in 2018 was still this wild, new-ish thing. According to the case files, he was lured to a meeting by people pretending to be from the CBI. Instead of a meeting, he was taken from a petrol pump. And get this—they used official government vehicles. He was held at a farmhouse, and they took 200 bitcoins from him. Worth a fortune even then.
But the story gets more tangled. It turns out Bhatt himself wasn’t exactly clean. He’d apparently stolen a huge amount of bitcoin from someone else in Surat. When Kotadiya and the others found out, they saw a chance to rob the robber. I guess that’s one way to describe it.
How the Plot Fell Apart
What’s interesting is how it all unraveled. Bhatt went to the CID after he was released. And that’s when the investigation started pulling threads. They arrested ten police officers. A lawyer was involved, too. The interrogations led them higher up the chain—to the ex-IPS officer and finally to the former MLA.
Kotadiya tried to disappear for a while. There was a warrant out for him. They caught him eventually. And then there was even a real CBI inspector mixed up in it, who tried to shake down Bhatt for a bribe. It’s a lot to keep straight.
This verdict probably won’t be the last word. There will likely be appeals. But for now, it feels significant. A case that involved politicians, police, and a lot of money in a form that’s hard to trace. Maybe it’s a sign that the system can still work, even when the crime feels like something from a movie.
