Six months after fleeing the country following a massive raid on his fraud call centre set-up at Mira Road, Sagar Thakkar alias Shaggy, the kingpin in multi-crore scam, was finally arrested at Mumbai airport on Saturday
Kingpin of the Mira Road call centre scam, Sagar Thakkar alias Shaggy, was arrested by the Thane police yesterday. Pic/SNEHA KHARABE
Six months after fleeing the country following a massive raid on his fraud call centre set-up at Mira Road, Sagar Thakkar alias Shaggy, the kingpin in the multi-crore scam, was finally arrested at the Mumbai airport on Saturday. He will remain in police custody till April 13.
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Nitin Thakre, senior inspector, Thane crime branch, said the 24-year-old was first detained at the airport by immigration, as there was a Lookout Circular in his name, before the Thane police took custody of him.
On October 4, the Thane police busted the call centre scam at Mira Road, where around 70 accused were booked and 630 were detained and released after questioning.
Param Bir Singh, CP, Thane, at a press conference on Saturday
Confessed to crime
Thane Police Commissioner Parambir Singh, who interrogated Thakkar for an hour, said, "Sagar has confessed to his crime. Following the raids in October, he had fled to Ahmedabad and then took a flight to Dubai. From there, he went to Thailand were he stayed for 10 days, before returning to Dubai. The US police had issued a red corner notice against him after which he was detained in Dubai for two months and prevented from travelling. As soon as his red corner notice was cleared, he left Dubai for India," said Singh.
Mira Road call centre scam: Shaggy's gift for lover was Virat Kohli's Audi
Singh admitted to being impressed by Thakkar's in-depth knowledge of the law, both American and Indian, as well as about IT.
Sagar Thakkar
Thakkar's 'business'
"He said he started the business in Navsari, Surat, before shifting to Ahmedabad and Mumbai. He claims he had a large number of phone numbers and used to do call blasting where 10,000 calls were made in an hour, which would make it tough for numbers to be traced. They also used burner phones (see box) to make calls. He claims he was doing this for the past five-six years and such call centres were active in NCR, Noida, Gurgaon, Hyderabad and Kolkata. It was also active in Pakistan, China, Russia, South Africa and Canada," Singh said.
Reema Thakkar
Looking for other accused
"We are trying to locate Sagar's parents. Sagar has three bungalows in Ahmedabad, yet claims he never made much money. He said out of every Rs 100 he earned, he got Rs 60. Of this, he distributed Rs 40 among the staff and was left with just Rs 20," said a police officer. "We also found that one Tapesh Gupta was working on his behalf," said the officer, stating that the name Reema Thakkar figures among the accused, but her role is not yet clear. She used to send cash from Ahmedabad to Mumbai through angadias, the officer said.
Dreamt of making millions
Sagar Thakkar's father, a building contractor, moved to Ahmedabad with his family when Sagar was 15. "He claims his father suffered losses in business and when they shifted to Ahmedabad, for six days the family struggled even to eat. He then decided to become a millionaire. When he failed at selling memory cards, he decided to do something on his own," said a police officer.
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