Once the blue-eyed boy of Mumbai police for acting as an informer, Kirtesh Kavi has been arrested by the Crime Branch for taking out call data records (CDRs) of people and charging money for it
Kirtesh Kavi
Kirtesh Kavi
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Once the blue-eyed boy of Mumbai police for acting as an informer, Kirtesh Kavi has been arrested by the Crime Branch for taking out call data records (CDRs) of people and charging money for it. An accomplice, Laxman Thakur, has also been arrested; the police are on the lookout for their counterparts in Delhi and also suspect that top officers in the Mumbai and Navi Mumbai police forces have taken help from him in this matter.
The Crime Branch said it had recently received information about a Juhu-based man, who runs 'Mastermind Detective Agency'. On checking the agency's website, officers found that the company could obtain CDRs of any number.
The police then made a decoy call to the number on the website and sought a number's CDR for the last three months. Thakur said he would charge Rs 50,000 for the information. The decoy agreed. Thakur asked him to collect the information from a hotel in Bandra West. The Crime Branch laid a trap and arrested him on January 31.
On interrogating Thakur, the police came to know that he used to get the information from Kavi, owner of Goregaon-based Cosmopolitan Securities and Detective Services. Officers arrested Kavi and raided his office from where several laptops and phones were seized.
A crime branch officer said, "He established his detective agency in 1999 and started taking out CDRs and selling them to clients, who used to be either corporate honchos spying on their opponents, or people who doubted their partners. He used to charge hefty amounts, ranging from R20,000 to R50,000 for the information."