Court sends Guru Satam aide to crime branch custody

Mumbai: A special MCOCA court on Wednesday remanded Krushnakumar Nayar alias Kevin, a close aide, of gangster Guru Satam who has now settled in Hong Kong, in crime bra-nch custody till January 16.

The police nabbed him from Trivandrum in Ker-ala on January 6 when he landed from Hong Kong and produced him before the court on Wednesday in an extortion case. He has been charged with collecting extortion money through hawala and sending it to Satam.

Nayar is the sixth arrest in this extortion case and the crime branch since July 2018 has already arrested Amol Vichare (41), Bharat Solanki alias Kalia (30), Rajesh Ambre alias Bhai (48), Bipin Dhotre (48) and Dipak Lodya alias Soni (53). All these five accused are currently in judicial custody.

During the investigation, Kevin’s name cropped up and since he was abroad a look-out notice was issued in his name. The police nabbed him in Kerala on January 6, as soon as he landed from Hong Kong to visit his hometown in Kerala.

Though the charge-sheet in the case has already been filed, MC-OCA judge V.S. Padalkar remanded Kevin in police custody, observing that he was absconding till no-w and his custodial interrogation was necessary.

The arrests were made after a developer, who has his office in Fort in south Mumbai and whose development projects are underway in different parts of the city, complained to the police that he has been receiving threatening phone calls from unknown foreign numbers demanding extortion since the past few years. The calls started after he took over a redevelopment project of a chawl in Parel.

According to the complaint, the calls were made in the name of Satam and it was conveyed to him by callers that anybody working in Satam’s area needed to pay him. The police has claimed that in 1995 somebody had fired at the complainant and hence he got scared when he again started receiving constant threatening calls. The complainant for the first time had paid '6 lakh to a henchman of Satam in 2014. However, after a few months Satam allegedly again started calling the complainant for more money.