When Khalid approved oversized hoardings, wife’s business partner received lakhs from Ego Media: SIT

The SIT told the court that Khan, a Govandi-based business associate of Khalid’s wife Summana, received lakhs of rupees from Bhinde and Marathe in lieu of approvals for oversized hoardings granted by Khalid

MUMBAI: The special investigation team (SIT) of Mumbai crime branch probing the May 13 Ghatkopar hoarding collapse incident has opposed the bail plea of Jahnavi Marathe, former director of Ego Media Pvt Ltd, saying she, Ego Media owner Bhavesh Bhinde and Arshad Khan, purported business partner of suspended additional director general of police Quaiser Khalid’s wife, had hatched the conspiracy to erect oversized hoardings together.

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“It has been found that Marathe and Bhinde paid a large sum of money from their bank account to Arshad Khan to obtain permission from the railway police commisionerate for the said gigantic hoarding,” the SIT told the court on August 2, in response to Marathe’s bail plea.

Khalid had allegedly given permission to erect four hoardings measuring 140X120-feet in Ghatkopar in 2022 hours before the end of his term as commissioner of government railway police (GRP), although the maximum permissible size of hoardings as stipulated by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) was 40x40-feet.

The SIT told the court that Khan, a Govandi-based business associate of Khalid’s wife Summana, received lakhs of rupees from Bhinde and Marathe in lieu of approvals for oversized hoardings granted by Khalid. One of these hoardings collapsed on the adjacent petrol pump during a squall on May 13, killing 17 people and injuring over 70 persons.

Public prosecutor Iqbal Solkar submitted that Marathe conspired with the railway police commisionerate, various officials of the BMC and others to set up the hoarding on GRP land. Khan’s name emerged during Marathe’s interrogation, he said, as she revealed that Ego Media had issued several blank cheques to Khan in 2021 and 2022 when Khalid granted approvals to erect oversized hoardings without calling for tenders.

According to the 3,299-page charge-sheet submitted by the crime branch in July, Khan allegedly convinced 12 people in Govandi to allow him to use their bank accounts to deposit cheques, which he withdrew over time.

Khan, who is now absconding, had moved the sessions court for anticipatory bail last week, but the order on his plea was adjourned.

So far, the SIT has arrested four people in connection with the case, including Bhinde, Marathe, Manoj Ramkrishna Sanghu – a BMC engineer who issued the safety certificate for the ill-fated hoarding, and Sagar Kumbhar – the contractor who erected the hoarding. Both Sanghu and Kumbhar are presently out on bail.