Court denies bail to D-gang member arrested in extortion case

MUMBAI: The sessions court on Saturday denied bail to Ramdas Parshuram Rahane, 48, an aide of fugitive gangster Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar, arrested in an extortion case involving a businessman from Dubai, primarily because of his purported involvement in serious crimes.
In 2000, a person named Ali invested AED 5,000 ( ₹70,000 at the time) in a hotel in Dubai. Dawood’s brother and 1993 Mumbai blasts accused Anees Ibrahim Kaskar then allegedly told the hotel owner that the money invested by Ali belonged to him and threatened him to repay it with interest.
Ali was then shot dead, allegedly by Anees’s henchmen in 2001, when he denied having invested the gangster’s money. Meanwhile, the hotel owner began to receive threat calls from Anees, to whom he paid ₹40 lakh out of fear and fled Dubai in 2001. In August 2017, the hotel owner received another threat call from D-gang member Nasir Khan from Pakistan, pertaining to which FIRs were registered in June 2018 in different police stations in Mumbai, Nashik, and Gujarat.
Rahane, an associate of Anees, was arrested in connection with the extortion cases. He had unsuccessfully applied for bail in May 2019. He then filed another bail application under section 11 (power to transfer cases to regular courts) of Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act, which was rejected again in January 2022. He applied yet another time for bail on the grounds of deteriorating health and that the charges levelled against him were prima facie false and frivolous.
Advocate Farhana Shah, representing Rahane, submitted that there was non-compliance with sections 41(A) (arrest without warrant) and 41(C) (arrest without warrant to prevent someone from tampering with evidence) of the Criminal Procedure Code. Moreover, she submitted that the transfer of the FIR against Rahane from the Malad police station to the crime branch was illegal, abrupt and evasive. The application further stated that Rahane was acquitted on September 5, 2016, in the MCOCA case and that he is being prosecuted only for being a member of the organised crime syndicate headed by Dawood.
Meanwhile, special prosecutor Jaysing Desai stated that the court, while passing an order in 2019, had discussed in detail the record showing Rahane’s complicity in this crime and that he has not satisfied the twin conditions for the grant of bail laid down under section 21(4) of MCOCA. The twin conditions are when the magistrate is satisfied that the accused has not committed the offence and will not commit any other offence.
Accepting the arguments, additional sessions judge BD Shelke denied bail to Rahane, stating that he has not satisfied the twin conditions.