In a major financial fraud case, a 59-year-old businessman from Gamdevi, along with his wife and 25-year-old son, has been arrested for duping a lounge owner and his associate of Rs1.3 crore under the pretext of offering lucrative returns from stock market investments.
The complaint was filed by Notriga Engineer, a 31-year-old entrepreneur who runs a lounge near Lamington Road. He met Prajwal Shah during a gaming tournament in 2018. Prajwal allegedly built trust by initially returning small investments with attractive profits, convincing Notriga to invest larger sums.
Later, Prajwal claimed his father had access to high-yield market schemes that promised 5–10% returns within eight days. Lured by the quick profit pitch, Notriga began investing regularly between 2019 and 2021, eventually transferring over Rs91 lakh through online and cash transactions to accounts linked to the Shah family.
When the returns stopped arriving in late 2020, the Shahs allegedly cited family hardships—like a pending loan and the mother’s cancer diagnosis—to extract another Rs20 lakh in cash, raising the total to Rs1.11 crore, plus Rs19 lakh in promised interest.
To assure repayment, the family issued two post-dated cheques worth Rs32 lakh and Rs98 lakh, but the first cheque bounced due to insufficient funds. After that, they cut off all contact with Notriga.
The investigation traced the money to a bank account under “Global Traders”, managed by Nitin Bohra and Pankaj Jain, who allegedly handed over the funds in cash to Prajwal. Police confirmed that the funds were never invested, but instead misappropriated by the family.
The family was arrested after failing to respond to multiple police summons. They now face charges under relevant sections of BNS and the Negotiable Instruments Act.
