Bizman beaten, stripped by goon, who claims to be Dawood’s aide

Six people in Mumbai were booked for allegedly holding a businessman hostage, beating him, and stripping him.

Mumbai: Six people were booked on Friday for allegedly holding a businessman hostage in a godown in Ghatkopar, where he was beaten up and stripped, and a video of him was taken in a state of undress. One of the goons also asked him to repay the money as soon as possible, claiming to be an associate of fugitive gangster Dawood Ibrahim. The complainant, Jitendra Gulwani, is a Chembur-based medicine distributor. Gulwani told the police that he had ordered medicines from three of the accused Dhruv Mehta of Life Care Distributors, Siddharth Trivedi of Healing Pharma, and Vinit Mehta of P Vishram Distributors in June.

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While part payments of all the traders have been made, he told the police he still owed all three a big chunk of the money for the wares. The other accused named in the complaint are not known to the complainant.

On October 10, Vinit Mehta of P Vishram Distributors called Gulwani at the former’s godown on LBS Road, Ghatkopar to discuss money matters, according to the complainant where all three distributors met him. Trivedi was accompanied by an unknown person.

“This person started threatening and assaulting me. The others also joined him and thrashed me. They also called in another man who was being addressed as Pathan. He told me was a member of the D company (an aide of Dawood Ibrahim), and put a knife to my stomach and threatened me a much worse treatment if I didn’t pay back soon,” the complainant told the police.

Pathan also made the complainant strip and took a video of him, said the police. At first, they threatened to spread this video among the medical distributors that the accused did business with. “At this point, the complainant was bleeding profusely. The accused gave him a T-shirt as his own clothes had been badly torn off. They let him go after several hours of holding him at the godown. At the end, he was told that they could also make a similar video of the complainant’s daughter,” said an official from Parksite police.

After being let off, Gulwani went to Rajawadi Hospital for treatment of his injuries. He approached the police later after repeated threats from the accused.

The Parksite police have booked all the accused under sections 141 (unlawful assembly), 143 (unlawful assembly), 144 (joining unlawful assembly with deadly weapon), 149 (committing an offence as a member of an unlawful assembly), 342 (wrongful confinement), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace) and 506 (2) (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code.