MCOCA can be invoked against gambling gangs: Bombay HC

On April 8, 2019, a team of police personnel from Kolhapur’s Karvir police station raided the gambling den of Salim Mulla.

The Bombay high court on Tuesday upheld invocation of stringent provisions of the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA), 1999, against a gang run by a local from Kolhapur.

A file photo of Bombay high court. (HT photo)

On April 8, 2019, a team of police personnel from Kolhapur’s Karvir police station raided the gambling den of Salim Mulla.

When the police party was seizing the material and cash found at the den, Mulla’s wife Shama reached the den with some gang members and all of them assaulted the policemen.

Police initially booked the accused persons under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code, Maharashtra Gambling Act, Maharashtra Police Act and Maharashtra Prohibition Act. Two days later police invoked stringent provisions of MCOCA against the gang, involving more than 40 members.

Fourteen of them had moved high court challenging invocation of MCOCA against them. They argued that they were not present at the den when it was raided, and they did not have any association with Mulla or his alleged organised crime syndicate.

They further argued that on the basis of the material collected by police, they can, at the most, be said to have committed the offences under the gambling act, and since maximum punishment for these offences is two years imprisonment, MCOCA could not have been invoked against them.

A division bench of chief justice BP Dharmadhikari and justice NR Borkar, however, rejected the argument after noticing that the petitioners provided risk cover to the main accused Mulla and thus helped him run the gambling den.

“If the case of the prosecution is accepted, the organised crime syndicate of the accused [Mulla] would not have succeeded in gambling activity or business in absence of the helping hand of the petitioners,” said the bench rejecting their argument.

Gambling by itself may not be organised crime, but an organised crime syndicate may take recourse to it as one of its profit-making ventures.

The bench added, “If the existence of an organised crime syndicate comes to the knowledge of the state for the first time while conducting the raid on a gambling establishment and the investigation shows previous two or more charge-sheets for cognisable offences punishable with imprisonment of three or more years, the police may take recourse to the MCOCA .”