ATS gets custody of three accused from Karnataka

Mumbai: A special Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) court on Saturday remanded Amol Kale, Ganesh Miskin and Amit Baddi from Karnataka to Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) custody till October 12 in connection with the recovery of arms and explosives from Nalasopara last month. The accused Kale was in CBI custody for Dabholkar murder case. According to the prosecution, the accused allegedly wanted to target Sunburn festival and a theatre that was showing movie Padmavat.

“Contention of prosecution is that role of accused was disclosed by the co-accused in the panchnama, during recovery of some objectionable material on September 12, 2018. Their names also cropped up during further investigation and to ascertain their roles the ATS needs their custody to further investigate the matter,” said chief public prosecutor Jaisingh Desai while seeking custody of the trio before special UAPA judge V.S. Padalkar.

Advocate Desai further argued, “In order to unearth the names of other accused, how the conspiracy was hatched and who hatched it and role played by them, the custody of these accused is required.”

Answering question asked by the judge, advocate Desai informed the court that CBI arrested Kale on May 22 in connection with rationalist Narendra Dabholkar murder case in Pune and these accused were also suspected to be involved in the murder of activist journalist Gauri Lankesh. He told the judge that Miskin and Baddi were also in custody since August 8.

“We want to confront these accused with the material available with ATS and their names appearing in panchnama is prima facie material against them and hence the accused should be remanded to police custody,” argued Mr Desai.

Advocate Sanjeev Punalekar opposed the request of ATS seeking their custody saying these accused belong to Karnataka and only one of them can understand little bit of Hindi rest understands only Kannad language. He argued that there are no grounds to seek police custody of these accused.

However, the judge remanded the trio to ATS custody till October 12.