Daijiworld Media Network - Belagavi (SP)
Belagavi, May 16: Police personnel of the city crime branch (CCB) here, who are on a hot pursuit of Rashid Malbari after coming to know that he had been conducting criminal activities after choosing this city as his base for some time in the recent past, have arrested six accomplices of the elusive fugitive. One of them happens to be a former president of the zilla panchayat here.
Addressing a press conference here on Monday May 15, city police commissioner, T G Krishna Bhat, informed that six people who had supported Malbari's activities here, former zilla panchyaat president, Nazeer Nadaf, Navid Qazi, Sarfaraz Jamadar, Muzaffar Sheikh of Kakati Ways in the city, Imtiaz Abdul Aziz Deloit of Ashoknagar, and Jitin Kadam from Jagalapet, Ramanagara in Uttara Kannada district have been arrested. He added that a car has been confiscated from their possession.
"We came to know about Rashid Malbari's criminal activities here when we began investigating the case of abduction and release of a realtor from the city, Shariff Yaragatti, about a month back. We have information that former zilla panchayat president, Nazeer Nadaf, had sheltered Rashid Malbari in his farm house at Asundi, Saudatti," Bhat explained. He stated further that Malbari had built a gang with the assistance of Nadaf in the city, which used to target businessmen and forcibly collect money from them. Nadaf and Malbari had together prepared a list of entrepreneurs who could be targetted. During their investigation, police also found that with the help of Nadaf, Rashid Malbari had threatened several business persons from here and succeeded in extracting money from them. Bhat said that the police are investigating the case from all the angles.
The commissioner said that Ayaz Ahmed from Karwar and Ashish Ranjan from Goa had been abducted, murdered, and their bodies were tossed away at Yallapur and Ankola about two months back as these two persons had cheated Aslam Builder from Mumbai in some financial matters. "The skeletal remains of Rohan Redekar, son of Suresh Redekar, entrepreneur from the city, who went missing two years back, was found from Chorla Ghat. The gang of Rashid had abducted Redekar in Febrauray 2015 for money. On the same night, Redekar was stabbed with a knife to death. The body of Redekar was thrown away in Chorla Ghat. On the basis of some evidences we got from the spot, we have established that the skeleton we found belonged to Redekar," he explained.
Bhat said that three teams have been formed to find out the whereabouts of Malbari and take him to custody, and that teams have been conducting search operations in Mumbai and Bengaluru. "Rashid had used a number of cellphones and several SIMs for his criminal activities. We will find out people who provided cellphones and SIM to him. We have knowledge that three corporators from the city had met Rashid Malbari," stated deputy commissioner of police, Amarnath Reddy.
The theory that six sharp shooters who were recently arrested with arms here were hired by Rashid Malbari is gaining ground. There had been a notion that they had come here to rescue Dinesh Shetty from Hindalaga jail. Dinesh Shetty and Malbari became sworn enemies after the murder of advocate, Naushad Kashimji at Mangaluru, who represented Malbari in the court, in 2009. Attempts had been made on Shetty's life several times. The police had believed that they came to release Shetty from the jail but the current thinking is that they were here to eliminate Dinesh Shetty.