Cheques bare Romesh8217;s extortion links

The recovery of the cheques from Sharma8217;s house, police officials maintain, is no coincidence since they have with them a tape-recorded conversation between Dawood Ibrahim8217;s aide, Abu Salem and Romesh Sharma in which a Rs two crore payment from Vinay Singh is mentioned. Salem in the conversation, tells Sharma that Vinay Singh had been contacted and that the Rs twocrore would soon be paid up.

However, when the joint raids were conducted at Sharma8217;s Mayfair Gardens residence, it was not Delhi police but the Income Tax sleuths who chanced upon the two post-dated cheques. The cheques, sources say, were recovered in the presence of witnesses and the Income Tax Department was proceeding to question Romesh Sharma about the payments. Copies of the cheques have since been given by the I-T Department to the Delhi police.

But police sources say while this may be the most convincing piece of documentary evidence with them on Romesh Sharma8217;s links with the extortion mafia, they still did not have a complainant in the case. Vinay Singh and other company officials have unofficially told the police that the cheques were given to Adani for some pending payments.

Says a police officer working on the case, 8220;While the proprietors of Lucky Exports may be trying to pass off the payments as official liability, we have probed the matter and found no business links between the twotraders. They are clearly too scared to talk and we are trying to bring them forward to file a complaint.8221;

Officials also say that the links of Gautam Adani and his company Adani Exports will also be probed. Sources say the Rs 50 crore which Vinay Singh was trying to pass off as some 8220;advance payments8221; to Adani was in all probability the best proof with them of extortion money being routed to Dawood8217;s man in Delhi, Romesh Sharma.