“The nine complainants are doctors who approached Shah for securing admissions for their children in medical colleges and paid an amount of Rs 3 lakh to 12 lakh, totaling up to Rs 90.5 lakh to Shah. The arrested accused gave them fake letters printed on letter-heads of renowned medical colleges in which they were promised a seat in the colleges,” said Senior Police Inspector Kiran Sonone of the Oshiwara police station. However, when the parents approached the colleges and discovered that there were no seat secured, they approached the police. However, by then Shah had closed his shop in Oshiwara and had absconded.

According to Sonone, Shah was also contacted by Padmini Kapila (52), an actress who wanted to enter film production. “Promising to get her a loan of Rs 1 crore from a finance company, Shah also persuaded Kapila to hand him the documents of a flat that she owned in Juhu,” said Sonone.

Sonone said after taking the relevant documents from Kapila, Shah asked her to open an account with the bank for receiving the loan amount and made his accomplice, a bank employee, to assure Kapila that her loan has been processed. He also took ten signed blank cheques from her on the pretext of deducting monthly installments of the loan. Thereafter, Shah took the documents of the Juhu flat and with the help of a woman, who posed as Kapila, secured a loan of Rs 74.95 lakh from a financial company by misguiding them that Kapila wanted to sell the Juhu flat to Shah and the documents are to be kept as a mortgage with the finance company as security of the loan. “The loan that Shah received was deposited in the account of Kapila. Shah later withdrew the entire amount from the bank,” said Sonone. It was only on February 23, 2007 when Kapila went to the bank to enquire about the loan did she realise that she was duped.

“Investigations reveal that Shah comes from a good family, however, he has many cases of fraud against him at Vikhroli, Borivali, Dharavi, Dindoshi and Jogeshwari police stations. He was earlier arrested in 2007 for duping a student with false promises of securing admission and had taken Rs 10 lakh from him. He was given bail after he returned the money back to the complainant,” added Kiran Sonone.