Mumbai The Mumbai sessions court on Monday granted bail to three police officers arrested in connection with the Angadia extortion case registered by the LT Marg police station.
Additional sessions judge R M Sadrani granted bail to police inspector Om Wangate, 39, assistant police inspector Nitin Kadam, 38, and police sub-inspector Samadhan Jamdade, 33, all of whom were attached to the LT Marg police station at the relevant time, on furnishing personal bonds of ₹25,000 each and one or two sureties in the same amount.
The court has granted them bail primarily in view of the fact that now, the investigation is complete and the crime intelligence unit (CIU) of the city crime branch has filed a charge sheet against them, said their counsel, advocate Vinod Chate.
Besides, Chate said, the court also took into consideration the fact that the witnesses, from whom they allegedly extorted money, had not identified the three police officers in the test identification parade.
The LT Marg police station had on February 20, 2022, registered an offence alleging that the trio had extorted ₹19 lakh from Angadias in south Mumbai last December under suspended deputy commissioner of police Saurabh Tripathi’s instruction. Tripathi was DCP zone 2 and had gone incommunicado the very next day after the case was registered and is still at large. The state government suspended him on March 22.
As per the FIR, the action against the police officers was initiated after Yogeshbhai Gandhi, Jatin Shah, Madhusudan Rawal and Maganbhai Prajapati and others of Bhuleshwar Angadia Association, met senior police officers and complained that the money was being extorted from them by threatening to report them to the Income Tax department whenever their employees were found carrying cash and valuables.
An enquiry was conducted in their written complaint and the FIR was registered based on the enquiry report.
In the 1,100-page charge sheet that the CIU filed on April 18 against the three officers, the crime branch has cited about 70 witnesses, including seven whose statements are recorded under section 164 the CrPC before metropolitan magistrates.
Apart from the three, the CIU has also arrested Tripathi’s brother-in-law Ashutosh Mishra, an SGST officer in Uttar Pradesh, and his parent’s domestic help, Pappu Gaud. Police have also named Tripathi’s father as an accused in the case.