The Pune police on Thursday said they had detained Kiran Gosavi, a controversial witness and self-styled private investigator in the Mumbai cruise drugs case, in connection with a cheating case lodged in 2018.
“We have taken him into custody from the outskirts of Pune. Our case is regarding a cheating case in which Gosavi was absconding. He had promised jobs to some people and a charge sheet was filed in this regard. As per the record, he was ‘missing’ in this case for two years. We are completing the pre-arrest procedures,” said Pune Commissioner of Police Amitabh Gupta.
Neither the Mumbai police nor the NCB had yet sought Mr. Gosavi’s custody from the Pune police, Mr. Gupta said.
“We will first finish pending investigations, if any… In case some other agency wishes Gosavi’s remand, then we will certainly discuss the matter with the Director General of Police and coordinate at the State level,” he said.
Earlier, a team of policemen from the anti-extortion cell of the Pune Crime Branch took the absconding Mr. Gosavi into custody from a lodge in the city’s Katraj area at around 3 a.m.
Mr. Gupta informed that prior to his detention, Mr. Gosavi had been to several places including Lucknow, Fatehpur, Telangana, Jabalpur, Lonavala, Mumbai and Panvel in Maharashtra.
“In Lucknow, Gosavi was apparently using the alias of ‘Sachin Patil’. He also claims to have been working for an NGO ‘Stop Crime’. We are verifying these details…Gosavi has claimed that he is in the business of export-import and job placements,” said the Pune Police Commissioner.
Mr. Gupta said after Mr. Gosavi’s recent pictures (in the Mumbai cruise drug case) went viral, the Pune police began searching for him in earnest and formed several teams to nab him.
The Commissioner further said it was likely that there were more victims who fell prey to the swindling schemes of the accused, and that if they approached the Pune police, more cases would be lodged against Mr. Gosavi.
Prior to that, Mr. Gosavi had said he wanted to surrender to the Uttar Pradesh police as he apparently felt “threatened” in Maharashtra.
However, on Wednesday, he travelled to Pune and told a news channel that he would be appearing before NCB authorities who are conducting an internal inquiry against Sameer Wankhede (the NCB’s Mumbai zonal director) in Mumbai.
Mr. Gosavi claimed that following his Mumbai appearance before the NCB, he planned to surrender to the Pune Police.
Sources in the city police’s Crime Branch said that they detained him before he could go travel to Mumbai.
The city police had kept Mr. Gosavi under intense surveillance and were reportedly tracking a dozen possible locations as to where the absconder might be. A look out circular (LOC) against him had been issued by the Pune police on October 13 in order to prevent Gosavi fleeing the country.
The shadowy ‘private investigator’, who made news after his selfie with Aryan Khan — son of Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan — went viral on social media and questions were raised about his conduct during the drug bust of October 2, had reportedly gone incommunicado after the incident.
While questions were raised about Mr. Gosavi’s controversial involvement in the NCB raid, it transpired an FIR had been lodged against him in connection with a cheating case by Chinmay Deshmukh, a resident of the city’s Kasba Peth area at the Faraskhana police station on May 29, 2018.
According to the FIR, Mr. Gosavi had posted an advertisement about hotel management jobs on social media platforms and Deshmukh got in touch with him. Mr. Gosavi had allegedly promised the latter a job Malaysia and had asked him to transfer a sum of ₹3.09 lakh to his bank account between November 2017 and March 2018.
After neither job nor his money were forthcoming, a frustrated Mr. Deshmukh lodged a police complaint after which a case under Sections 419 and 420 of the Indian Penal Code and relevant sections of the Information Technology Act were lodged against Mr. Gosavi. Mr. Deshmukh has further claimed that he was threatened by Mr. Gosavi.
Mr. Gosavi has also been named as an accused in three more cheating cases, including one in Mumbai in 2007 and two in Thane in 2015 and 2016.