Angadia extortion case: Court refuses IPS officer’s pre-arrest bail plea

Mumbai Sessions Court on Wednesday rejected the anticipatory bail application of suspended Indian Police Service (IPS) officer Saurabh Tripathi, who is an accused in the angadia extortion case

Mumbai Mumbai Sessions Court on Wednesday rejected the anticipatory bail application of suspended Indian Police Service (IPS) officer Saurabh Tripathi, who is an accused in the angadia extortion case.

Additional sessions judge R M Sadrani was informed by the former deputy commissioner of police’s counsel advocate Aniket Nikam that till last week, Tripathi was not named anywhere – neither in the FIR nor in the preliminary enquiry conducted before registration of the FIR (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Additional sessions judge R M Sadrani was informed by the former deputy commissioner of police’s counsel advocate Aniket Nikam that till last week, Tripathi was not named anywhere – neither in the FIR nor in the preliminary enquiry conducted before registration of the FIR.

Nikam submitted that members of the angadia association had met additional commissioner of police, South Region, Dilip Sawant, and later also met the then Mumbai police commissioner, after which a detailed inquiry was ordered on December 7 and the offence was registered in the last week of February on the basis of the enquiry report.

“Nowhere in the preliminary inquiry, I am named by anybody. The three police officers arrested in the case - inspector Om Wangate, PSI Nitin Kadam and API Samadhan Jamdade – had not named me in the inquiry. They had also recorded statements of various other people,” Nikam had argued.

Purportedly acting on Tripathi’s instructions, the three officers allegedly extorted ₹19 lakh from angadias in south Mumbai in the first week of December 2021.

He submitted that the first time Tripathi’s name came up in the case was on March 9, when Wangate had managed to get interim relief in his anticipatory bail plea from the Bombay High court though he later withdrew the plea and surrendered.

Nikam had added that Tripathi was named as an accused on the basis of Wangate’s statement recorded while in police custody. He added that the two other accused have also taken Tripathi’s name during their interrogation. “But, statements made while in police custody are inadmissible in evidence. The very same people had not named him in the preliminary inquiry,” he argued.

Nikam had also pointed out that the remand reports, seeking custody of the three arrested inspectors, did not name Tripathi. The lawyer added that the Mumbai crime branch has been claiming that the IPS officer in a meeting in September 2021, had asked his subordinate officers to take action against hawala operators. He asked whether asking junior officers to act as per law a crime. “I was just doing my duty,” the lawyer had maintained.

Assistant public prosecutor Abhijit Gondwal had opposed the plea by pointing out that during interrogation, Wangate said that the DCP had orally given the illegal direction to search the bags of angadias. Kadam and Jamdade had corroborated the claim.

“Though Tripathi had claimed he was not involved in action taken on the angadias on four days in December, record shows on September 9, he met ATC officials and directed them to gather information and take action on hawala transactions and people involved in it. It’s a pre-planned conspiracy,” said the crime branch reply.