DCP Saurabh Tripathi, brother-in-law move HC for quashing of FIR

MUMBAI: Deputy commissioner of police Saurabh Tripathi and his brother-in-law, Ashutosh Mishra, assistant commissioner of Sales Tax, recently moved the Bombay high court to quash an FIR registered against them for allegedly extorting money from Angadias.
A division bench of justice AS Gadkari and Dr Neela Gokhale has adjourned the hearing on the petition after an assistant public prosecutor sought time to file a reply in the matter.
The petition was filed under section 482 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) to quash the First Information Report.
“The LT Marg police on February 19, 2022, registered a case following a preliminary inquiry by the additional commissioner of police (south), Dilip Sawant, under sections of extortion, robbery and wrongful restraint of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) against three police officers,” said a police officer.
Purportedly acting on Tripathi’s instructions, the three officers – police sub-inspector Nitin Kadam, assistant police inspector Samadhan Jamdade, and inspector Om Wangate – had in the first week of December 2021 allegedly extorted ₹19 lakh from Angadias in south Mumbai by threatening to report them to the income tax department.
Angadias deals with transporting gold jewellery and cash in exchange for a fee.
In March, three police officers then working with the LT Marg police were arrested by the Crime Intelligence Unit (CIU) and later granted bail by the Sessions Court in May 2022.
Tripathi was DCP zone 2 and had gone incommunicado the day after the case was registered. The state government suspended him in March 2022 and reinstated him on 30th June 2023.
As per the FIR, the action against the police officers was initiated after Yogeshbhai Gandhi, Jatin Shah, Madhusudan Rawal and Maganbhai Prajapati and others of Bhuleshwar Angadia Association, met senior police officers and complained that the money was being extorted from them by threatening to report them to the Income Tax department whenever their employees were found carrying cash and valuables.
In the 1,100-page charge sheet that the CIU filed on April 18 against the three officers, the crime branch has cited about 70 witnesses, including seven whose statements are recorded under section 164 a CrPC before metropolitan magistrates.
Apart from the three, the CIU has also arrested Tripathi’s brother-in-law Ashutosh Mishra, a Sales Tax officer in Uttar Pradesh in April 2022.
It was alleged that Mishra had received the money extorted by Tripathi.
Tripathi in his anticipatory bail plea which was rejected by the court had argued through his counsel Aniket Nikam that he was not named in the First Information Report nor the preliminary inquiry carried against the three officers and only his name first cropped in was when the officers were in police custody and statements given in police custody are in admissible in evidence.
It was claimed the DCP was implicated with nefarious intent, as he had started acting against the illegal hawala operators and was not succumbing to the pressure of their mediators.