Caught in the jaws of loan sharks

Trigger warning: The article has references to suicide. Gajjar had borrowed ₹2.49 crore from two private lenders, Hardik Mehta and Jalpaben Jani, allegedly at a 4% “extortionate rate”, a term that the police use to describe such cases. Therefore, at the direction of the Chief Minister, we launched this drive against private lenders to help the victims,” Gujarat’s Junior Home Minister, Harsh Sanghvi, had said in July. We have launched a crackdown on lenders who use muscle power against borrowers,” says Surat Police Commissioner, Anupan Singh Gehlot. Awareness programmes Last year, when the first drive against lenders was launched in Surat, the then Police Commissioner, Ajay Tomar, had described the lenders as “blood suckers.” He had launched the drive after realising that the borrowers were afraid to approach the police in such cases.