Mumbai cult head was a smooth-talking fraud

SUNIL KULKARNI WAS HELD IN ’97 FOR POSING AS A BANK OFFICIAL AND FLEECING ₹3L FROM A MAN ON THE PRETEXT OF GETTING HIM A LOAN

When police officer Shekhar Tore heard about the arrest of Sunil Kulkarni, it rang a bell.

Tore was posted in Pune 20 years ago when he arrested Kulkarni for allegedly duping a home loan seeker.

“He was a “Natwarlal” in the making,” Tore says about Kulkarni, who is now under arrest in Mumbai for heading a cult called Shifu Sunkriti that is accused of entrapping and cheating young people. Tore, who is now posted in the Bandra division of Mumbai crime branch as an assistant commissioner of police, was an assistant police inspector in Pune when he busted Kulkarni, a smooth-talking commerce graduate.

Kulkarni, since his brush with the law in Pune, has become the ring leader of an alleged drug and sex syndicate, police suspect.

The 54-year-old was arrested on April 20 on the Mumbai high court’s order after a city-based couple filed a petition claiming that Shifu Sunkriti entrapped their two daughters, who are in their early twenties.

Shifu Sunkriti’s Facebook page has more than 4,000 members and posts on it make a range of claims: from running a ‘centre for neuro plasticity’ to training people in ‘miraculous self energy enhancement’. Making tall claims seemed to be Kulkarni’s nature, said Tore. “He had all the traits of a master conman.”

The police officer nabbed Kulkarni from a lodge in Bhosari, a suburb near Pune, in March 1997, while acting on the complaint of a home-loan seeker.

The cult leader had allegedly posed as a bank official and fleeced at least ₹3 lakh from the man to sanction a loan. He was camping in the lodge to collect more money when Tore booked him for cheating and fraud and took him into custody.

Tore realised Kulkarni, who hailed from Kolhapur, was no ordinary criminal. “He was barely 30 then. He had a pleasant personality and could impress anyone with his fluent English,” Tore said.

Kulkarni used his knowledge to entrap the gullible. “He is a jack of all trades. He would use his communication skills to strike a chord,” Tore said. Not surprisingly, Kulkarni used the same skills to “settle” the case with the complainant.

The Mumbai police have allegedly found that Kulkarni changed his base to several cities before he was arrested in Delhi in 2014 for sexually abusing a minor and booked under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act. He shifted to Mumbai after he got bail in that case.

When Tore heard of Kulkarni’s arrest, he contacted his superior, deputy commissioner of police, Crime, Vinay Rathod. Tore’s information came handy for Rathod in tearing apart Kulkarni’s claims that he was a doctor and a psychiatrist.