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A Village Burnt Overnight: Tears, Loss and Survival in Dhamangaon Blaze

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  Sitting amid the blackened remains of his home, 32-year-old Nikesh Gawali carefully broke open a half-melted plastic box with a screwdriver. His hands shook slightly, not out of fear, but out of hope. “I’m trying to find my daughter Aarti’s gold earrings,” he said quietly, still focused on the box. “She’s just five. I got them made recently after months of labour work.” The plastic box, warped and blackened by heat, was one of the few things left from his two-room house on the outskirts of Dhamangaon village . All around him lay ash, broken tin sheets and charred wooden beams. The walls had cracked under the heat and the front room’s tin roof had caved in completely. What remained was a blackened debris all around - almost nothing to suggest a home once stood there. Nikesh earns his living as an agricultural labourer, like many in the village. Work is uncertain and depends on the season. Those earrings weren’t just jewellery - they were a small dream, a reward for his hard work,...
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Did Nagpur top brass messed up Ambekar’s arrest ?

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  • The notorious gangster is still eluding his arrest as cops declared imposition of MCOCA first instead of nabbing him, giving sufficient time to goon to go into hiding 


By Dheeraj Fartode 
In their bid to send home message of cracking down on the gangsters did city police bosses slip-up at most crucial moment and ended-up sending across a tip that enabled Santosh Ambekar to escape dragnet spread out for him? It seems top officers jumped the gun and gave established procedures a go-by instead of first arresting Ambekar under Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA).
Nagpur CP Sharda Prasad Yadav
Alarmed by this announcement, the goon just vanished, leaving Nagpur police bosses red faced. The strategy of city police bosses of going public to announce booking of Ambekar instead of first arresting him, appeared to have backfired. The strategy of the top officials in especially Ambekar case proved costlier for the city police. Special teams of Crime Branch have now launched manhunt and also interrogated relatives of Ambekar for a clue. Recently, a team of Crime Branch camping in Mumbai returned to city, empty handed. 

Competent authority passed an order to book Ambekar under MCOCA on January 27 afternoon. Later, a press conference was arranged at Crime Branch office at 7 pm so that the information could be relayed to local media about invoking MCOCA against Ambekar and his associates. Sources informed that Ambekar got information about the MCOCA action and he immediately switched off his phone and slipped out of city. City police since then have raided numerous places to trace Ambekar but failed to get any trace.

Interestingly, Ambekar was detained at Lakadganj Police Station on same day i.e. January 27. Sources confirmed to The Hitavada that Ambekar was brought to police station on January 27 at around 12 noon. As an offence was registered against him at Sadar Police Station for taking out a rally without permission on January 26, the Republic Day, Ambekar was picked-up by Lakadganj police team and detained for some time. However, since then, his whereabouts are not known while station level officer had to face the brunt.  

Now the question that arise is that if Ambekar was to booked under MCOCA then how was he allowed to move out of police custody and on whose order? Somewhere senior officer slipped-up and in name of confidentiality the MCOCA action remained under wraps giving Ambekar to escape right under police nose, it now seems.

Similarly if the MCOCA action was so confidential then did Ambekar sensed trouble and went underground or something else happened?
Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Sonegaon S A Tore informed The Hitavada that searches were conducted at Ambekar’s residence on second day as he received the case papers 24 hours after MCOCA order was passed. “We are searching for Ambekar in Nagpur and Mumbai. A special team was sent to Mumbai on a tip-off but he was not found there,” the ACP further said. 

Ambekar and his gang members were booked under MCOCA for attacking and threatening a couple in a bid to grab their land by forging documents of registry and also by illegally demolishing part of the house evoking massive public outroar against this goon.

Other associates including Sanjay Fatode, Shakti Manpiya, Akash Borkar, Yuvraj Mathankar, Gautam Bhatkar, Sachin Jayant Adulkar, Lokesh Kumbhatkar, Vinod Masram, Prakash Mankar and Vijay Borkar have already been booked under MCOCA.

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