Court acquits Kumar Pillai in 2009 Kanjurmarg firing case

Gangster Kumar Pillai acquitted in 2009 extortion attempt case; member of his gang arrested after a decade in Karnataka.

A special court under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crimes Act (MCOCA) on Wednesday acquitted gangster Kumar Pillai whose gang members, in an attempt to extort money from a developer in Kanjurmarg, allegedly fired at his office in 2009.

Court acquits Kumar Pillai in 2009 Kanjurmarg firing case

Pillai, who was arrested in three cases, was earlier exonerated from the cases registered in 2020 and 2022.

The Mumbai crime branch in 2018 arrested a member of the Pillai gang who had been hiding in Karnataka for nearly a decade. Police claimed that Bhaskar Pujari along with his associates had in 2009 barged into developer Ramesh Shah’s office at Vikroli to threaten him for extortion. The accused tried to kill and fired two shots at Shah, but he had a narrow escape. The developer had received many threat calls, a crime branch officer said.

Two days after this incident, Pujari and his associates fired two bullets at another developer’s office in Kanjurmarg, allegedly on the instruction of Pillai. Before fleeing the spot, the accused handed over a chit of paper to a security guard, which said ‘Call Kumar Pillai’.

Pujari and his associates were booked in both the cases under stringent sections of MCOCA and sections dealing with attempt to murder and extortion among others of the Indian Penal code. Six accused were arrested earlier while Bhaskar and Pillai were on the run.

After a court issued an arrest warrant against Pujari, a team from unit 7 of the Mumbai crime branch nabbed him at Airoli in Navi Mumbai, said police inspector Satish Tavare.