Ex Sena corporator’s PA, 3 others others arrested for extortion

The personal assistant of a former corporator from the Eknath Shinde camp, along with his accomplices and a local journalist have been arrested on Sunday for allegedly extorting money from a supplier of construction materials

MUMBAI: The personal assistant of a former corporator from the Eknath Shinde camp, along with his accomplices and a local journalist have been arrested on Sunday for allegedly extorting money from a supplier of construction materials.

Manish Nair, personal assistant of a former corporator, was arrested for extortion, along with three others.

According to the Powai police, the complainant, Zubair Ansari, 35, runs a business supplying sand, stones and other construction material from Powai, Kurla, and the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC) to the Royal Palm Estate in Goregaon.

Ansari told the police that on July 10, two of his acquaintances, Navshya Valvi and Shahid Ansari, asked him to repair the road from Filterpada to Royal Palm by pouring in mud, gravel, and stones into the spoil patches. The duo claimed that the Andheri Shiv Sena department chief, Manish Nair, would look into the matter if there were any issues. Ansari refused since it was a government road and it was the civic body’s responsibility to repair it.

According to the police, ten days later, Nair’s assistant, Sunny Kulaye, told Ansari that he would have to start paying up if he wanted to continue transporting construction material to the area. A day later, Nair called him up and even threatened to drive him out of business if he didn’t pay up. Nair also said that he would complain to the police that Ansari was carrying more material than allowed by the Motor Vehicles (MV) Act.

Vavli, Kulaye, and Shahid, demanded a random of ₹50,000 from Ansari, and afraid of their threats, he paid them half the amount on July 26. He was later told that he would have to pay ₹1,000 for each truck carrying construction material from the area, and ₹26,000 more was extorted from him, the police said.

Contrary to what Ansari thought, the matter was far from settled, and soon after he resumed work, a local journalist, Shahid Rizvi too demanded a ₹5,000 ransom claiming that he would report Ansari for overloading his trucks.

When Ansari refused to pay up, on September 17, one of his trucks was blocked by Shahid and two others, Firoza Khan and her husband Alam Khan, local associates of Nair, who refused to let the truck go unless he paid them ₹20,000. They even filed a case against him, for transporting goods that exceed the truck’s capacity as per the MV act, even though he was doing anything illegal.

When Nair demanded money from Ansari again, the latter refused to pay up since he was not doing anything illegal, and instead approached the Powai police with recordings of calls where Nair and his associates were demanding money from him.

Senior police inspector of Powai police, Jitendra Sonawane said that they have registered a case against all the accused under sections 351(2) (intimidation), 308(2) and 308(3) (extortion), 126(2) (taking possession of private property) and 3(5)(criminal conspiracy) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS). “We arrested the accused and produced them before the court where they were remanded to police custody for two days,” said a police officer.