Three men from Mumbai’s Borivali area used fake passes to gain entry to a Dandiya event organised by Maharashtra’s BJP MLC Pravin Darekar, but ran out of luck when they were caught by the volunteers.
The three – Sanjay Zala, Arpit Patadiya, and Girish Solanki – were arrested on Thursday and slapped with a criminal case under sections of cheating and forgery attracting imprisonment up to seven years, officials said.
The entry fee for the event being held as part of the Navratri festivities is Rs 300 for a day.
The Borivali police arrested them on the complaint of businessman Kunal Turakiya who also looks after the event management work of I-Tech Events, which organises ‘Rangraas with Bhumi Trivedi Navratri 2023’. Darekar, along with two others, are the main organisers.
As per the First Information Report (FIR), considering the recent cases of fraud gangs selling fake passes of the popular Garbha and Dandiya events of Falguni Pathak and Kinjal Dave, the organisers of the event briefed their volunteers to be more vigilant and look for people who try to sneak into the Dandiya event with a fake pass.
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The volunteers who caught the three men took them to police inspector Jadhav, who was posted with his team at the event site. When the passes were matched with the real ones, they were found to be fake, the FIR states.
“When asked about the passes, they did not give satisfactory answers. Hence, they were booked and subsequently arrested,” said an officer from Borivali police station.
They have been charged with sections 420 (cheating), 465 (forgery), 468 (forgery for the purpose of cheating), 471 (dishonestly using as genuine any forged documents), and 34 (common intention) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
