Deal gone wrong: Drug manufacturer abducted by gang and tortured in captivity for 33 days rescued

DCP (crime) Raj Tilak Roushan said that on June 13, two persons including Sajid Electricwala and his aide, one Shabbir Siddique were abducted in three cars from Hotel Alibaba in Oshiwara by the accused. The duo was taken to a farmhouse at Neral in Raigad and were beaten up there.

Since the main focus was on Electricwala, Siddique managed to pull out one of the three railings in a grill and managed to jump out of the farmhouse and escape. He returned to his Kurla residence the next day.

The gang got scared that Siddique would lead the police to the farmhouse, and hence they fled to Nashik where they stayed for a few days. They continued changing locations and moved to Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi as well.

An official said the gang headed by one Sarwar Khan, who is suspected to have links to Chhota Shakeel, had earlier this year paid Rs 50 lakh to Electricwala as he allegedly know how to manufacture mephedrone. The money was paid to manufacture mephedrone or MD and return the profits.

“However, since Electricwala did not return the amount and kept avoiding them, they decided to kidnap him. After they abducted him and his aide, they beat him up and kept calling his wife demanding Rs 50 lakh,” an official said. Electricwala told the police that the Rs 50 lakh had been paid to him to purchase property.

The official added that while they got back the amount they had paid him, they got greedy and started demanding that the family pay interest as well and sought nearly Rs 3 crore and held him captive even as they kept changing locations.

Till then the matter was under wraps as Electricwala’s family is based in Gujarat and had not reported him missing. However, when he was not released even by July, Siddique, who had escaped earlier, approached the police and gave a complaint based on which an FIR was registered at the Oshiwara police station on July 10 and the matter was handed over to the crime branch.

Six teams comprising of various crime branch officers began tracking the movements of the accused and eventually on Tuesday the team reached Banda in UP. The crime branch took assistance from the UP Special Task Force (STF) and launched an operation finally rescuing Electricwala from the clutches of the accused persons.

While Sarwar Khan, Rahul Sawant and Mahtab Ali were arrested from UP, four others identified as Santosh Waghmare, Satish Kadu, Yunis Tevarpalli and Tausif Sandhi were arrested from Mumbai and Raigad. “Seven accused have been arrested in the case so far while we are looking for a few more accused in the case,” Roushan said.

Sajid Electricwala, the primary target of the abduction, was previously arrested by Maharashtra’s Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) in 2015 in a multi-crore MD drug case from Oshiwara.

During his time in prison, he reportedly became acquainted with notorious gangster Harish Mandvilkar, who helped him threaten a witness in the case against him. After this came to light, an FIR was registered against both Electricwala and Mandvilkar.

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