A sessions court on Thursday issued a non-bailable warrant against former BJP legislator Nalin Kotadiya in the multi-crore bitcoin extortion case after he skipped two summons. The CID (Crime) had submitted a report seeking his arrest warrant to the court on Monday. The sessions judge approved the plea on Thursday.

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“We have alerted Gujarat police about Kotadiya and search for him is going on,” a CID official told DNA. “After the non-bailable warrant has been issued against him and any Gujarat police officer can arrest him. Till now, there have been no signs of Kotadiya found, but the search has been intensified.” The CID (Crime) has also issued a lookout notice to airport authorities across the court.

It has been 14 days since the CID issued the first summons to Kotadiya after his name was revealed by main accused Kirit Paladiya who kidnapped builder Sailesh Bhatt and extorted of 176 bitcoin from him with the help of Amreli police officials. Till now, CID officials have issued two summons to Kotadiya, one on May 4 and another on May 5.

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On May 7, the former MLA released a press note claiming that he was innocent and was being framed in the case. He also accused the victim of kidnapping two investors in February and extorting 2,300 cryptocurrencies from them.

On May 9, Kotadiya faxed a letter to the CID (Crime), in which he requested the officials to not carry out the third summons since he was “out of station” and will only be able to return on May 11 or 12. He has yet to show up.

CID officials have also carried out search operations at 25 locations in Ahmedabad, Surat and Amreli, but they have yet to get any leads about Kotadiya’s whereabouts.

The CID had even sent a team to Chandigarh after they got a tip-off that the former legislator was there, but the information turned out to be false.

Source: DNA India