Travel Co owner gets extortion threats

Vastrapur police apprehended a man for making threat calls to his former business partner in order to extort a sum of Rs10 crore. The arrest was made on the heels of a complaint filed by Meghji Khetani, owner of Patel Tours and Travels.

Khetani is a resident of Lad society in Bodakdev and Patel Tours and Travels is a subsidiary of his firm, Patel Inn & Travels Pvt Ltd. In his complaint, Khetani alleged his former business partner, Rajesh Patel, even solicited the services of a professional extortionist, Bijal Bharwad, to extract the money.

According to Khetani, he received five calls from the duo on Tuesday. The first call came from Bharwad, who identified himself as contract killer hired by Patel, and ordered Khetani to pay the money. Bharwad called him again minutes later and told him to talk to Patel, but Khetani did not comply.

Later that night, Bharwad called Khetani twice threatening to kidnap him and demand a ransom. With no response, Patel finally called him at 9:42pm demanding he pay Rs10 crore to Bharwad.

In the final call, Bharwad warned the man against informing police, and even threatened to kill Khetani’s family if he failed to pay up.

Fed up, Khetani finally lodged a complaint on Tuesday night. Investigation revealed that Khetani and Patel were business partners when they started ‘Patel Travel Services’ in 2004.

However, they dissolved the company in 2006 and shared the money. Khetani started his own firm. “After 2006, Patel has had nothing to do with my business. I don’t know why he is demanding Rs10 crore,” he said.

Khetani had recently sold a residential building in Paldi for Rs6.5 crore, which might have been the reason of discord between them. Reportedly, Patel had objected to Khetani selling the building at the time. The hunt for Bharwad is on.