Court grants Dawood’s aide bail in extortion case

A Mumbai court granted bail to Riyaz Bhati, associate of Dawood Ibrahim, in a 2022 extortion case due to prolonged incarceration without trial.

MUMBAI: Sessions court earlier this month granted bail to Riyaz Bhati, a close associate of fugitive underworld don Dawood Ibrahim, in a 2022 extortion case when he was arrested for allegedly threatening his business partner to pay ₹10-12 lakh. The court granted bail on November 4 after considering the long period of incarceration with no progress in the trial.

Court grants Dawood’s aide bail in extortion case

The case was registered with the extortion cell of the Mumbai police based on a complaint filed by one Usmad Ahmad Jan Khan, an acquaintance of Bhati since 2003 and one of his business partners in the ARK Developers group. ARK Developers was a construction company formed by Bhati and his associates namely Afghan Khan, Aslam Patni, Kamal Jedhwani, Zinat and Khalid, in 2006. The complainant Usmad Khan became a partner in ARK Developers in 2014 after purchasing Zinat’s shares.

According to the prosecution, the developers took over a building project from a builder called Surojit Roy at the Stadium View Society in Andheri for development. But they handed over the project to another group after failing to complete it. In 2018, a complaint was filed by Roy against all partners of ARK Developers in connection with the project transition. Bhati was arrested in the case and was released on bail after six months. After getting out, he allegedly began threatening the other partners, including Usmad Khan, to pay ₹65 lakh as part of the expenses incurred by him in the case filed by Roy. He demanded around ₹10 lakh from each of the partners and threatened to kill them if they failed to pay the amount.

The prosecution argued that Bhati is a habitual offender - acquitted in three cases and involved in eight other crimes. “If the applicant is released on bail, there is the possibility of his repeating the crime, influencing the witnesses, and fleeing from justice”, they submitted, seeking rejection of his bail plea.

The defence submitted that Bhati was innocent and falsely implicated in the said crime, adding that the complaint was lodged with malafide intentions. “There is delay in lodging the FIR. Though the FIR alleges that the applicant had threatened the other partners of ARK Developers, no other partners lodged any complaint against the applicant,” submitted the defence.

The court made note of the bail granted by a special MCOCA court in September this year to Riyaz Bhati and Salim Fruit who is the brother-in-law of Chhota Shakeel, in connection with another extortion case. Noting that Bhati had made out a case for granting bail, the court observed, “After considering the overall view of the matter including the long incarceration of the applicant accused in jail for around three years without commencement of trial, a well-established principle of bail i.e. bail is the rule and refusal is an exception.”