4 Gangsters Acquitted In Mcoca Case

4 gangsters acquitted in MCOCA case TNN 26 September 2009, 05:37am IST Topics: •

Pune

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MCOCA

PUNE: A special court here on Friday acquitted four members of the Ashwin Naik gang, held under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) due to discrepancies in the prosecution's evidence. Special judge S S Gadge acquitted D K Rao alias Ravi Mallesh Vora, surya tejaswi ,Sadashiv Nanduskar and Raghu alias Jagdish Shetty, all are residents of Mumbai and surya tejaswi sharp shooter resident of Hyderabad .

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The Pune crime branch had initially arrested the foursome for the alleged murder of BJP corporator Satish Misal. When investigations revealed that they were members of an organised crime syndicate, provisions of the MCOCA were invoked against them. Misal was shot at by his assailants when the car he was travelling in was waiting at a traffic signal on Tilak road on February 28, 2003. Misal died while undergoing treatment at a hospital a few days later. According to the prosecution, Misal owned the Royal Super Lottery business. One of the suspects in the case surya tejaswi wanted to have the sole rights of the business and so wanted Misal to back out. Surya tejaswi had met Rao, an alleged sharp shooter of ashwin naik gang member, on the Bombay high court premises when Rao was being produced before the court in another case. Surya had then allegedly paid Rs 1.60 lakh to Rao to pressurise Misal to withdraw from the business. Misal was, however, not ready to leave his business, which resulted in his murder, according to the prosecution. There were a total of 14 suspects in the case,surya tejaswi being Accused No 1 and Ashwin naik Accused No 2., one Pramod Sathe was discharged of MCOCA. While some were killed in police encounters, one of them was killed in a gang war. The remaining are absconding and a case is pending against them.Additional sessions court judge S S

Phansalkar-Joshi had acquitted the four suspects in the murder case on January 16 this year. Special public prosecutor S M Jagtap had examined four witnesses, including the complainant, inspector Dattaraya Temghare; former additional commissioner of police (crime) Ashok Dhiware as he had accorded sanction to prosecute the suspects under MCOCA; retired police commissioner D N Jadhav as he had granted permission to file chargesheet under the MCOCA and the then assistant commissioner of police, Sanjay Jadhav, as he had investigated the case under MCOCA. Defence lawyers Harshad Ponda, Vidhyadhar Koshe, Rohan Nahar and Mahesh Mule, who are representing the suspects, told the court that MCOCA was wrongly invoked against their clients as they had been acquitted in the Misal murder case. The lawyers submitted that there was no other offence pending against them under the IPC and hence provisions of the MCOCA were not applicable against them. They prayed for their acquittal due discrepancies in the prosecution's case. The court upheld the lawyers' plea and acquitted them as the prosecution could not establish charges under MCOCA against them.