Brother of slain ‘matka king’ held for planning attack on self

According to the police, Vinod’s motive was to get police protection for himself following the incident.

“During the interrogations of the accused who were arrested on Thursday, it was revealed that Vinod Bhagat had orchestrated a firing on his own car and had even paid a supari amount for the job. This afternoon we arrested Vinod on charges of criminal conspiracy and lodging a false complaint. He has also been booked under the Arms Act for providing the weapon used in the offence,” said Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Rakesh Maria.

At 9.15 pm on October 25 outside Manick Lodge in Gamdevi, while Vinod Bhagat was leaving in an Ambassador car, two men appeared on a Yamaha motorbike and the pillion rider fired a round at the car. The Crime Branch started conducting parallel investigations in the case, and three accused identified as Deepak Suman Patel (28), Amar Ramkumar Jha (24) and Ajay Singh Amarjeet Singh (32), were arrested on Thursday.

According to the police, Patel worked as an odd-job man for Vinod Bhagat for the past four to five years. Singh was originally a member of the Arun Gawli gang, before joining the Pandav Putra gang as a shooter. Preliminary enquiries have revealed that Patel had paid a supari of Rs 1 lakh for the firing. It was Jha who was at the wheel and Singh was the one who fired at the car. The motorbike is owned by Jha.

“It has now been established that it was Vinod Bhagat himself who paid Rs 1.1 lakh to Patel for the job and even provided him the firearm used. We believe the motive was to get police protection for himself. Some time back, he had filed an application with the police seeking protection claiming that he was receiving threat calls from outside the country,” said Maria.

Kalyan Matka back in business, say cops
After cracking down on the ‘Main Matka’ and ‘Kalyan Matka’ rackets in the country a couple of months ago, the Mumbai Police Crime Branch believes that the Kalyan Matka is back in business, only this time from Dubai.
“We believe that the Kalyan Matka is now being run from Dubai, after operations from Goa. Gujarat, Indore and Rajasthan were stopped through police action,” said a Crime Branch source.
On Friday afternoon, the police raided three rooms in Cuffe Parade where the racket was on.  The raids were conducted on Rooms 105-1, 105-2 and 105-3 at the Ambedkar Nagar slum. The police arrested 41 persons, of whom 33 were placing bets and 7 were writing them down. Cash amounting to Rs.23,280 was also seized during the raid.