TWO former employees of Shotformats Digital productions Limited Susheel Puri and Irfan Patel were arrested by the Mumbai crime branch on July 24 for criminal breach of trust. The two have been remanded to police custody till July 31. This came to light when Ravindra Khera opened up to the crime branch when he was caught red handed on July 16 in Goregaon for extortion with the owners of Shotformats. Susheel Puri is alleged to have provided sensitive documents of the company to Ravindra Khera.
Khera had been blackmailing Niyati Shah who runs Shotformats Digital Productions for nearly 11 months claiming that he was in possession of sensitive financial information concerning her company.
Niyati Shah said, “Khera had been blackmailing from August last year claiming that he had financial information about my company and threatened to share it with the service tax and income tax departments. All my transactions were in white so I was not scared. But when Khera would come to know if I swiped by credit card and even payments made to vendors which was alarming.’’
In October 2016, a government department conducted a raid at Shah’s office and residence, Khera called her up and threatened her saying that he had damaging information of her company and the officers conducting raid were known to him. He asked her to pay Rs 2 cr to keep quiet.
In November, Shah paid RS 10 lakh to Khera after he claimed that Susheel Puri and Rachna Puri had intimated service tax authorities about financial irregularities in her company.
Shah clarified that they not defaulted on service tax it was just a delay of three months.
In June this year, after Khera demanded another Rs 20 lakh. A trap was laid by the police and Khera was caught red handed at a five star hotel in the western suburbs of Mumbai.
Shah informs, “I told the police that the kind of information Khera would have been possible if an insider was involved. I suspected the involvement of my former partner Rachna Puri and her husband Susheel, who was the chief acquisition manager and resigned in 2014 and ex-employee Irfan Patel.’’
“During questioning, they admitted that they met Khera four times and handed him CDs containing financial information about the company. They were produced before the court today and we have got their custody.” While Khera, booked on extortion charges, was remanded to two days police custody, Puri and Patel, booked on charges of criminal breach of trust, have been remanded to police custody until July 31.Khera’s arrest has also led the police to documents and CDs containing financial information of more than 25 different companies. The police is now investigating if Khera used similar method with other companies and also looking into Rachna Puri’s involvement though at present there is no evidence so far of her involvement.