Not named in enquiry report, FIR: Suspended DCP Saurabh Tripathi tells court

“I was nowhere named in the crime till last week,” Tripathi’s counsel, advocate Aniket Nikam, submitted while seeking anticipatory bail for the suspended IPS officer.

Mumbai: Suspended deputy commissioner of police Saurabh Tripathi, who has been named an accused in the angadia extortion case, on Thursday claimed before sessions court that he was not named in the FIR registered at LT Marg police station or in the preliminary enquiry report on the basis of which the extortion case was registered.

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. (HT PHOTO)

“I was nowhere named in the crime till last week,” Tripathi’s counsel, advocate Aniket Nikam, submitted while seeking anticipatory bail for the suspended IPS officer.

Nikam informed additional sessions judge R M Sadrani that the complainant angadias met Dilip Sawant, the additional commissioner of police, South Region and later the Mumbai police commissioner on December 7 and a detailed inquiry was conducted after which in February an offence was registered in the matter.

“Nowhere in the preliminary inquiry, I am named by anybody. The three accused -- inspector Om Wangate, PSI Nitin Kadam and API Samadhan Jamdade -- never named me in the inquiry. They had also recorded statements of various other people,” Nikam 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 added that the police officials are naming the DCP on Wangate’s statement recorded while in police custody and officials claimed the other two accused have also taken Tripathi’s name during 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 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 Tripathi had taken a meeting in September 2021 and asked his subordinate officers to take action against hawala operators and asked, if asking junior officers to act as per law was a crime. “I was just doing my duty,” Nikam said.

“If my subordinates commit illegal acts, can I be booked for merely having failed to act against them? By that logic, even Tripathi’s seniors are also required to be booked in the crime,” he said, adding that the former DCP was implicated with nefarious intent, as he had started taking action against the illegal hawala operators and was not succumbing to the pressure of their mediators.

The court has now posted the matter for further hearing on Friday.