The Vadodara Police on Sunday booked a conman for allegedly impersonating an official of the Gujarat chief minister’s office and reportedly raping a Mumbai-based woman while posing as the CMO official. Viraj Ashwin Patel, a resident of Gandhinagar’s Sargasan village, allegedly posed as an official of Gujarat CMO and the president of GIFT City in Gandhinagar during a brawl at a multiplex in Vadodara on Friday night, according to an Indian Express report.
Police, however, called his bluff, after which, the woman accompanying Viraj filed a police complaint against him for allegedly raping her several times on the pretext of a promise to make her the “brand ambassador” of GIFT City. A police officer said that Patel was to be formally arrested on Sunday and an investigation into the case is underway.
The accused, Viraj Ashwin Patel used forged identity documents to impersonate a government official, the officer said.
“Regarding the rape of the woman, we will probe if there are other persons involved in the crime as the complainant had received a phone call from another person proposing the brand ambassador job to her and connecting her with Patel. We will also investigate if an agency was working to lure unsuspecting women into such traps. It will be clear on questioning Patel after his formal arrest,” the officer was quoted by Indian Express as saying.
Police responded to reports of a brawl inside a multiplex in Vadodara on Friday night where Viraj identified himself as a staff of the CMO and as the president of GIFT City. However, on close examination of Viraj’s aadhar card, police discovered that the accused had not provided his surname in the document and had forged his PAN card to add his name as Viraj Shah.
Senior officials made enquiries to verify the claims of the accused only to find his narrative entirely fake, the first FIR against Viraj Ashwin Patel stated.
In the second FIR, the woman alleged that she received a call from an agency saying she had been selected as the brand ambassador of GIFT City, for which, a photoshoot will be held in Gujarat and Dubai.
The complainant further said that the agent then passed Viraj’s number to her who took her to Goa and allegedly raped her on the pretext of marriage.
Patel was booked under Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 170 (pretending to hold office as a public servant), 417 (punishment for cheating), 467 (forgery of a valuable security), 468 (forgery of a document with the intention of cheating) and 471 (dishonestly using a forged document as genuine) in the first FIR filed suo motu by the police. In the second FIR filed by the woman, the accused was booked under IPC sections 406(criminal breach of trust), 420 (Cheating and dishonestly), and 376(2)(n) (repeated rape on the same woman).
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