In a major development, a court in India has sentenced 14 individuals, including a former police superintendent, to life imprisonment over kidnapping and a Bitcoin (BTC) extortion crime. The case, which originally began in 2018, finally concluded last Friday, finding 14 out of 15 defendants guilty of criminal conspiracy, kidnapping for ransom, illegal detention, and assault.

A Bitcoin Crime Scandal

According to the local media outlet The Times of India , Jagdish Patel, a then-Amreli SP, and Nalin Kotadiya, a former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA), had learned that Surat Businessman Shailesh Bhatt successfully recovered 752 Bitcoin from a failed business venture run known as BitConnect.

Thereafter, Patel and Kotadiya orchestrated Bhatt’s abduction in

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