In Sessions

Police investigations revealed that the accused had attacked Gawli in order to avenge an earlier attack on Ashwin Naik by members of the Arun Gawli gang at the City Civil and Sessions court. The gangsters were tipped off by Nitin Vengulekar. All the accused were released on bail

While Vengulekar was discharged during the course of trial, Ramchandra Negi and Sunil Shinde jumped bail. Four accused were tried by Additional Sessions Judge S R Jaiswal. While Pillai was acquitted, Jayendra Jadhav, Rajendra Magagraj and Bapu Gaikwad were sentenced to three years rigorous imprisonment. Special Public Prosecutor G A Panna appeared for the state.

Bail plea of accused in taxi racket rejected

PrincipalJudge A S Aguiar today rejected the anticipatory bail application of Rakesh Arora, the main accused in a tourist taxi racket at Santacruz airport.

According to the airport police, on April 12 this year, four persons were arrested for possessing fake pre-paid tariff cards and fake bill books of Sarvodaya Travels, which closed down two years ago. The accused, Pravin Sarai, Pavan Kohali, Mehtab Hussain and Gawda, reportedly induced passengers at the Santacruz airport to hire their tourist taxis to reach their respective destinations after showing fake tariff and bill books. The accused told the police that they were working under the supervison of Arora.

According to the police, even though Arora had a cool cab and a taxi, he had violated RTO norms and used to charge the passengers exorbitant rates and never used the meter. During the course of investigations, it was revealed that the owner of Sarvodaya Travels, G L Raut, had closed down his travel agency two years back and had set up a hair cutting saloon.According to the police, Arora has 17 criminal cases against him at the Airport, Vile Parle, Saki Naka and MIDC police stations and had even been externed from the city some years ago.