‘Special 13’ conducts fake ED raid at jeweller’s home, loots gold worth Rs 25 lakh

Rajkot: The 2013 Akshay Kumar thriller ‘Special 26' played out in real life when a gang of 13 people made away with gold biscuits and jewellery worth Rs 25.25 lakh in a staged Enforcement Directorate (ED) raid at the house of a jeweller in Kutch's Gandhidham town.However, the Kutch East police nabbed 12 out of the 13 people and recovered the entire booty on Thursday, two days after they pulled off the sensational heist at the house of Kanaiya Thakkar, owner of Radhika Jewellers.Along with prime conspirators Bharat Morvadia and Devayat Khachar, the police arrested Abdul Sattar Manjothi, Hitesh Thakkar, Vinod Chudasama, Eugene David, Ashish Mishra, Chandraraj Nair, Ajay Dubey, Amit Mehta and his wife Nisha, and Shailendra Desai. Nair operates a private finance firm in Ahmedabad, and Ashish, Ajay, Amit, Nisha, and Vipin Sharma are his employees. Sharma is yet to be nabbed.Desai, 45, worked as a clerk in the office of the Divisional Railway Manager (DRM) in Ahmedabad since 2004. They carried out a three-hour raid before leaving with the valuablesUpon returning to the shop, Thakkar's son Gaurang informed him that a person claiming to be an ED officer visited the showroom and requested the contact number of one of their staff members, Dinesh Sodha. Gaurang got suspicious and took photographs of the person. Thakkar then approached the police, who identified the person as Abdul Sattar Manjothi. Manjothi also ran a weekly newspaper in Kutch.The police formed 10 teams to nab the accused and apprehended them from different places in Kutch and Ahmedabad city.Meticulous PlanningModvadia learned that the Income Tax department raided the jeweller six years ago and seized gold, silver, and cash. Speculating that Thakkar still held assets worth Rs 100 crore, he discussed the fake raid plan with Khachar. Khachar, in turn, involved Abdul Sattar Manjothi, who had offences of extortion and attempted murder in Jamnagar and Bhuj. Sattar roped in his friends Hitesh and Chudasama, who tipped off Mishra, whom they knew. Mishra then floated the idea to his boss Nair, who roped in his employees Mishra, Amit and his wife Nisha, Vipin Sharma, and Dubey. A fortnight before the raid, they met at a tea stall near Adipur bus station to finalise their plan. Desai was chosen to lead the raid by impersonating ED officer Ankit Tiwari, whose fake ID card they createdExecuting the PlotOn Dec 2, they arrived in Gandhidham in three cars, met at the bus station, and headed to the showroom and Thakkar's residence. They dressed in suits to pass off as govt officials and kept Nisha along to conduct searches of female family members.At 11 am, five members entered the showroom, flashed forged ED ID cards, and seized everyone's phones and DVRs. They told Thakkar to first take them to his cousin's house from where they took away only Rs 40,000 The gang then staged a search at Thakkar's house, where Nisha seized the mobile phones of his wife and mother. While searching, they found three gold biscuits of 100 gm each and four pouches of jewellery from the puja room and his wife's room. They laid out all the jewellery on the dining table and even videographed the entire raid to avoid suspicion