In setback to four municipal corporators who are facing arrest in the builder Suraj Parmar’s suicide case, the Thane sessions court on Thursday rejected their anticipatory bail application. The corporators are expected to approach high court for relief. After the judgment, the Thane police conducted a raid on the properties of the corporators who are absconding.
The court continued a hearing on the pre-arrest bail applications beyond its working hours and decided the matter at 7.30 pm
The prosecution alleged that applicants are members of a gang involved in extorting money from builders. Also every accused had criminal cases registered against him at different police stations.
The defence lawyer Bharat Sonawane, however, refuted this and said the applicants were not members of the gang and had not indulged in any extortion activities. Also defence lawyer argued that the corporators only tried to stop unauthorised work of Parmar’s construction site and for that from time-to-time they had sent him legal notices.
The public prosecutor, however, argued that all the applicants were out of town with one of them having crossed the border, and so if they were innocent why were they absconding. “The public prosecutor claimed that two of the corporators were arrested in a case of the Anti-Corruption Bureau three years ago. We argued that there is no valid reason to concentrate on their previous cases. Parmar has written names of every one from the municipal corporation and several other who harassed him, so why are they concentrating only on four corporators,” said Mr Sonawane.
After receiving the forensic science laboratory report of the suicide note of Parmar, the police claimed that the deceased had blamed four corporators Najeeb Mulla (NCP), Hanumant Jagdale (NCP), Vikrant Chavan (Congress) and Sudhakar Chavan (Maharashtra Navnirman Sena) for his extreme step. On Thursday, the police conducted raids on the houses of the absconding corporators.
