Inquiry ordered as UP prison official releases 3 instead of sending them back to city

A UP jail superintendent has been ordered to face a departmental inquiry for releasing three men booked in an extortion case in Mumbai and failing to inform a special court. The trio were sent to UP for trial in a cheating case, and were released after a local court granted bail in June and July 2022. They had been arrested in an extortion case in Mumbai and in the Nasik arms haul case in December 2017.

Mumbai: A special MCOCA (Maharashtra Control of Organised Crimes Act) court has ordered a departmental inquiry against the superintendent of Banda central jail, Uttar Pradesh, for releasing three persons who were booked in an extortion case in the city and failing to communicate about their release to the special court.

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The trio – Mohamed Salman Qureshi, Sanjay Salunkhe and Wajid Shah – was arrested in Maharashtra and sent to UP for the trial of a cheating case that was registered there. They were released in June and July last year after a local court granted them bail in the cheating case.

The three were arrested in an extortion case in Mumbai followed by the Nasik arms haul case in December 2017.

The special court said that the superintendent of the Central Prison at Banda was continuously directed to produce the accused before the MCOCA court either physically or through video conferencing. However, the accused were not produced before the court and therefore, a show-cause notice was also issued to him on June 12, 2023, as to why contempt proceedings should not be initiated against him.

After the notice, the prison authorities produced the fourth accused before the special court with a report that the other three accused were granted bail last year and have been released from prison.

In its report, the authority claimed that the superintendent had sent a radiogram to the MCOCA court on January 28 which showed that Qureshi, Salunkhe and Shah had been released from the jail on July 29, June 2 and June 22 in 2022, respectively.

The court fumed with the reply and noted, “It is serious misconduct on the part of the superintendent, central prison, Banda, Uttar Pradesh. Hence, departmental proceedings are required to be initiated against him by the competent authority.”

In December 2017, the Nashik rural police seized 25 rifles, one machine gun, 19 revolvers and 4,166 live cartridges, near Chandwad toll plaza on the Mumbai-Agra highway. The police had arrested Baduddin Juman Badshah, alias Sumit alias Suka, and Amir Rashid Shaikh in connection with the arms haul.

It was claimed that Suka, a Sewri resident wanted to start his own gang in the city and had gone to UP to buy firearms. In UP, when the shopkeeper refused to give them the arms and ammunition, they looted the entire shop and ran with weapons. However, the police nabbed them in Maharashtra.

After the arrest, Suka’s father approached a Chembur-based businessman for money and blamed him for Badshah’s arrest. The complainant claimed that after the accused threatened to kill him, the businessman lodged a formal complaint with the RAK Marg police in December 2017 based on which an extortion case was registered and the trio were arrested along with Suka and Shaikh.