In shocking development, Maharashtra’s Anti Terrorism Squad (ATS) has arrested a policeman posted at the high-security Arthur Road Central Prison for allegedly helping two incarcerated drug accused threaten a prosecution witness.
The policeman, whose name was not immediately known, was arrested on Friday and produced before a court which remanded in ATS’ custody till December 28.
The policeman’s arrest came on the heels of the arrest of two gangsters Harish Mandvi/kar and Sajid Electricwala, who were taken into the custody by the ATS from Arthur Road jail after Mandvikar threatened a witness to give false evidence in favour of Electricwala in another case.
The ATS arrested the policeman in connection with the 2015 ATS (Charkop Unit) case, in which it had busted an illegal drug manufacturing factory in Andheri west and seized 155 kilograms of the banned Mephedrone and arrested seven persons, including the factory owner Sajid Electricwala.
The ATS subsequently arrested three others -- gangster Harish Mandvikar and his henchmen, Sachin Kolekar and Sujit Padwalkar.
Electricwala, the prime accused in the 2015 case, was lodged at Arthur Road jail. The trial in the case got underway on November 26, 2020. Mandvikar, who was arrested in March 2020, was lodged in a cell next to that of Electricwala at Arthur Road jail.
Both Electricwala and Mandvikar became friends and in court they allegedly hatched an alleged conspiracy to threaten a prime witness whose deposition is currently underway before the Special Court.
As part of the alleged conspiracy, Mandvikar sent a hand-written chit from his cell to his henchman Kolekar, asking him to intimidate and scare the prime witness, an act allegedly carried out by Padwalkar.
The investigations revealed that the arrested police official deployed outside the Anda Cell had acted as the messenger to personally pass on handwritten chits from the jailed Mandvikar to his aides outside. “In fact, the concerned police man had passed similar handwritten notes for several months,” a senior ATS official said.