Gujarat ACB court convicts 14 in bitcoin extortion, kidnapping case

What the Record Shows

An ACB Special Court in Ahmedabad convicted 14 people on 29 August 2025 and sentenced them to life imprisonment in the case of the 2018 kidnapping and extortion of a Surat builder, in which the ransom was demanded and partly taken in bitcoin. The court, a designated Anti-Corruption Bureau court sitting within the Ahmedabad City Sessions Court, delivered the verdict after examining 173 witnesses.

Those convicted include former legislator Nalin Kotadiya; a former Indian Police Service officer, Jagdish Patel, who was Superintendent of Police for Amreli district at the material time; Anant Patel, then a police inspector with the Amreli Local Crime Branch; Sunil Nair, then a CBI inspector; the advocate Ketan Patel; and the businessman Kirit Paladiya, along with eight others. The court held them guilty of criminal conspiracy, kidnapping for ransom, wrongful confinement and assault.

One accused, Jatin Patel, was acquitted. His name does not belong in any list of those convicted; the court did not find the charge against him established. Reporting the acquittal alongside the convictions is not a footnote but part of the same verdict.

The convicted group is unusual because several of its members held public office. The prosecution's case, accepted by the court, was that the abduction was carried out under colour of police authority, which is why the offence was treated as graver than an ordinary kidnapping.

How It Worked

The trial court found that in 2018 a group of serving Amreli district police officers, led by the then Superintendent of Police, abducted the Surat builder from Gandhinagar and confined him at a farmhouse, where cash and cryptocurrency were extorted from him. Investigators recorded a ransom demand of about Rs 32 crore; roughly 200 bitcoins were later seized in connection with the case, and the Amreli police were found to have seized bitcoins valued at around Rs 12 crore.

The reason the builder was targeted, according to the prosecution, was that he was himself believed to be holding a large quantity of cryptocurrency. That belief traces to a separate strand of the same saga: a Gujarat CID Crime FIR (No. I-03 of 2018) alleges that the builder and others had earlier extorted 2,091 bitcoins, 11,000 litecoins and Rs 14.5 crore in cash from two other businessmen, per the record before the Gujarat High Court. The builder is an accused in that connected matter, which has remained under process.

The court also found that the conspiracy reached into the investigating machinery. The then CBI inspector was found to have accepted money, reported at around Rs 5 crore, to steer the probe away from the officers involved. It is that feature, the use of state power and an investigator's position as the instrument of the offence, that the prosecution described as a nexus of position and extortion.

The money-laundering dimension sits with the Enforcement Directorate. Its ECIR/AMZO/01 of 2019, built on predicate FIRs registered with the CID Crime Surat Zone police station, pursues the proceeds under Sections 3 and 4 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002. The underlying offences invoked in the FIRs include Sections 364A, 365, 384, 387 and 120-B of the Indian Penal Code, covering kidnapping for ransom, extortion and criminal conspiracy.

Who Lost Money

The immediate victim in the case that ended in conviction was the builder who was abducted and from whom bitcoin and cash were extorted. But the saga has more than one set of losers. The businessmen named in the earlier FIR, from whom, the Enforcement Directorate alleges, thousands of bitcoins and litecoins and Rs 14.5 crore were taken, are the victims of the strand in which the builder himself stands accused.

Quantifying the loss is complicated by the asset. Cryptocurrency prices swing widely, and the 200 bitcoins seized in the conviction case, or the 2,091 bitcoins referenced in the connected FIR, are worth vastly different sums depending on the date of valuation. The prosecution referred to holdings worth around Rs 150 crore in the underlying dispute, but that is an indicative figure, not a settled quantum of loss.

What the seizures show is that recovery ran through the criminal process and the Enforcement Directorate's attachment machinery rather than through any depositor-style distribution. This was not an investment scheme with a register of cheated investors; it was extortion of digital assets, and what is ultimately restored to the victims will depend on confiscation and the outcome of the money-laundering proceedings.

Where It Stands Now

The conviction and the life sentences were pronounced on 29 August 2025 and stand as recorded by the trial court. In a matter carrying life imprisonment, appeals to the Gujarat High Court are the expected next step; readers should assume the convicted persons will pursue appellate remedies, and any such appeal, if admitted, would not by itself displace the conviction.

The connected proceedings are live. The Gujarat High Court, in an order dated 3 October 2025 (R/Criminal Misc. Application No. 15886 of 2025), dismissed a regular bail application by the builder in the Enforcement Directorate's money-laundering case (ECIR/AMZO/01 of 2019), finding no change in circumstances since an earlier refusal on 21 February 2025. The builder therefore remains an accused facing the PMLA proceeding; nothing in the 29 August conviction of his abductors alters his own separate legal position.

A chargesheet, an FIR and an ECIR contain allegations, not findings of guilt; the persons still facing trial are presumed innocent until proven guilty, and due process continues. That presumption was displaced only for the 14 the court convicted, and only in the case decided against them.

Readers can follow related enforcement matters, from the ED's crypto and hawala cases to SEBI recovery closures, through Oquilia's enforcement news archive.

What It Means

The case is the clearest illustration in India of a simple point about cryptocurrency: its untraceability cuts both ways. The same feature that lets holders move value outside the banking system makes those holdings a target for extortion, and makes the proceeds hard to trace once taken. Here the asset changed hands by force, and the people the court found took it were wearing uniforms.

For the ordinary reader the takeaway is not to avoid a product but to understand a risk profile. Digital assets held outside custodial, regulated channels carry a physical-security dimension that a bank deposit does not: there is no institution to reverse an unauthorised transfer and no deposit insurance behind it. Where a dispute over such assets turns coercive, it is the criminal justice system, not a customer-grievance desk, that becomes the venue.

The institutional lesson is starker. When the convicted include a serving district police chief and a CBI inspector, the case shows both the vulnerability, that state power can be turned to private extortion, and the corrective, that the same system convicted its own after a long trial. Accountability arrived, but it took seven years from the 2018 offence to the 2025 verdict.

FAQ

Who was convicted and what was the sentence?

An ACB Special Court in Ahmedabad convicted 14 people on 29 August 2025 and sentenced them to life imprisonment for criminal conspiracy, kidnapping for ransom, wrongful confinement and assault. They include a former legislator, a former IPS officer who had been an Amreli Superintendent of Police, a police inspector, a then CBI inspector, an advocate and a businessman.

Was anyone acquitted?

Yes. One accused, Jatin Patel, was acquitted in the same judgment. The court did not find the charge against him established, and he should not be counted among those convicted.

Was this an investment or bitcoin "scam"?

No. No investor was induced to part with money by false promises. The case is one of extortion and kidnapping for ransom in which the ransom was demanded in cryptocurrency, carried out, as the court found, by police officers under colour of authority.

Does everyone named in the wider saga stand convicted?

No. The conviction is of the 14 in the kidnapping-and-extortion trial. A separate money-laundering case by the Enforcement Directorate, and the connected FIR in which the abducted builder is himself an accused, remain under process. Those still facing trial are presumed innocent until proven guilty.

Where can I read the official record?

The Gujarat High Court's order of 3 September 2024 in the Enforcement Directorate's case, which sets out the FIR, the ECIR (ECIR/AMZO/01 of 2019) and the cryptocurrency and cash amounts, is published on Indian Kanoon and linked below.

This report is based on the Gujarat High Court order of 3 September 2024 in Directorate of Enforcement v Shailesh Babulal Bhatt and the connected bail order dated 3 October 2025, together with contemporaneous records of the ACB Special Court's judgment of 29 August 2025, reviewed on 29 July 2026.