After avoiding Surat police for over a year, social media influencer Kirti Patel was arrested in Ahmedabad earlier this week. She is accused of being involved in a case of honey-trapping, blackmail, and defamation filed by a city-based builder, according to sources.
The woman, Kirti Patel, was arrested on Tuesday from the Sarkhej area of Ahmedabad. Police are still searching for two more people involved in the case.
Patel, 34, is a popular social media influencer with around 13 lakh followers.
On Wednesday, the Kapodara police took her to court and asked for a three-day police remand. However, the court denied the request and sent her to judicial custody at Surat Central Jail.
According to a media report, the case is linked to a property dispute between the complainant (a builder) and Vijay Savani, a real estate dealer in Surat. The case is still pending in court.
Police said that Savani tried to settle the dispute outside the court with the help of Patel and others. The FIR states that last year, Patel and her group invited the builder to a farmhouse in Kosadi village, Surat, for a meeting. There, they allegedly gave him a cold drink laced with a chemical and secretly took some inappropriate photos of him.
A few days later, Patel allegedly demanded ₹2 crore from the builder and threatened to leak the photos on social media. She also posted videos online to defame him, the FIR says.
The complaint was filed in June 2024 under several sections of the Indian Penal Code, including charges of extortion, criminal intimidation, conspiracy, and poisoning, along with sections of the IT Act. Along with Patel and Savani, two more people—Manisha Goswami and Jehangir Khan—were named in the FIR.
Savani was arrested last year, followed by Goswami and Khan. Patel had been on the run until her arrest this week.
Kapodara police station inspector M R Solanki said, “Earlier, we had arrested three accused and submitted chargesheet in the court. Patel was absconding and our teams were looking for her. After receiving tip-offs, we sent our teams to the Sarkhej area in Ahmedabad and caught her with the help of local police. We have seized her mobile phone and have sent it to the Forensic Science laboratory to retrieve the data. Two more accused named in the complaint are yet to be arrested and our teams are looking for them.”