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,...
FIVE persons, including two prison constables, were arrested by the City Police for supplying Ganja (Marijuna) to the inmates of Central Jail, on Wednesday. The prison staffers were charging Rs 5,000/- for delivery of Ganja to the inmates and using WhatsApp messenger to convey demands of the inmates to their accomplices living in the city, police officials said.
The arrested accused have been identified as Shrikant Thorat, Gopal Parate, Rahul Mendhekar, Prison constables Ajinkya Rathod and Prashant Rathod.
Commissioner of Police (CP) Amitesh Kumar told that Shrikant, Gopal and Rahul were history-sheeters. They were in the jail for around six months and developed friendship with notorious goons Nished Wasnik and Vaibhav Tandekar, who are behind the bars. Nished and Vaibhav were sentenced on the charges of murder and crypto currency fraud.
Later, Shrikant, Gopal and Rahul walked out of the jail on bail. While cooling their heels behind the bars, Nished and Ajinkya came in contact with the jail constables who used to supply them Ganja and other material, CP Kumar claimed.
“They were using a unique modus operandi in which a sim-card generated with bogus documents was used to maintain secrecy. After receiving request from Nished and Ajinkya, the constables used to write it on a paper and send the pictures to Shrikant, Gopal and Rahul on WhatsApp. A fruit-seller outside the Central Jail was receiving the packet from the three and forwarding it to the jail constables. They were secretly delivering the packets to Nished and Ajinkya in the jail,” the CP added.
According to CP Kumar, the constables charged Rs 5,000/- for delivery of Ganja, Rs 3,000/- for delivering food items and Rs 1,000/- for clothes.
Acting on a tip-off, the Crime Branch checked details of the mobile number and picked Shrikant, Gopal and Rahul. The three revealed the modus operandi behind the racket when the police professionally ‘grilled’ them. On the basis of their statement, the police arrested the jail constables.
An offence under Sections 120 (b), 420, 465, 468, 471 of Indian Penal Code read with Sections 42 and 45 of Prisoners’ Act was registered by Dhantoli police.
It may be mentioned here that in September this year, an undertrial MCOCA accused was arrested while trying to smuggle ganja and batteries of mobile phones inside the Central Jail while a mobile handset and Ganja was seized from one of the inmates of the Jail in April this year.
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