Dentist, aide held for duping Morbi businessman

Rajkot: A dentist and his close aide who had allegedly duped a ceramic unit owner in Morbi of Rs 13.6 crore over the past one year were arrested by the Morbi special operations group (SOG) on Tuesday.

The accused – Dr Vasant Bhojaviya and his aide Jayesh Solanki – have been arrested and will be produced before a local court for seeking their custody, said SOG inspector, J M Aal.

According to case details, the accused duo along with their two accomplices — Pradeep Karelia of Ahmedabad and Rachana Singh — had duped Morbi-based ceramic factory owner Vijay Gopani (44) of Rs 13.6 crore over a period of one year.

In 2016, Gopani had come in contact with Dr Bhojaviya and developed friendship with him. Dr Bhojaviya first took Rs 30 lakh from Gopani saying that he had cleared Indian Administrative Services exam and will become a collector soon.

Later, he told Gopani that he will soon be in a position to do great favours to him once he became a collector and thus, won Gopani’s trust.

Dr Bhojaviya had promised Gopani 10-year-long government contracts worth Rs 800 crore to Rs 1,000 crore, for which he needed a large amount of money to grease palms of different government officials. Dr Bhojaviya extracted a total of Rs 13.3 crore in parts from Gopani over the year.

However, as no contract saw the light of the day, Gopani realized the fraud and approached the police.