Mumbai: Rizwan Kaskar, Dawood Ibrahim’s nephew and son of Iqbal Kaskar and two others arrested with him have filed applications retracting their confessions. The trio has claimed that the police forcefully took their signature on confessional statements. The court has sought reply from police on these pleas by August 31. The 3 accused have been arrested under MCOCA in an extortion case.
“We had informed the court on last date of hearing that the police had forcefully taken signature of our client on confessional statement. It was not voluntary and he is retracting it. The court has sought prosecution’s reply on it,” said accused Ahmed Raza Afroz Wadhariya’s lawyer Mohammed Ahmed from MJ Legal. Wadhariya was the first person to be arrested in this case and later the Anti-Extortion Cell (AEC) of Mumbai police had arrested Rizwan Kaskar and Ashfaq Rafiq Towelwala.
The same day Kaskar’s lawyer Vishal Ingwale and Towelwala’s lawyer Sultan Khan informed the special judge D.S. Deshmukh that these persons are also retracting their confessional statements for the same reason.
It may be recalled that the arrests were made after the Pydhonie police received complaint from a local businessman that he had received threatening phone calls from Fahim Machmach. Complainant has alleged that Machmach had called him on behalf of gangster Chhota Shakeel at the instance of his business partner.
The victim also informed the police that Wadhariya had also called him saying he would lose his life if he would not follow Machmach’s instructions. The police had arrested Wadhariya from Mumbai airport when he was deported from Dubai.
Towelwala and complainant were business partners three years ago and used to import electronic articles from Dubai and China and used to sell it in India.
The police in its remand application had stated that Towelwala owed '15.5 lakh to complainant but despite repeated demands Towelwala didn’t return the money back.
Following this, police registered a case under section 387 (putting person in fear of death or of grievous hurt, in order to commit extortion) and section 120 B (criminal conspiracy) of IPC and arrested the trio.
