Co-accused asks: Samad who?

I haven8217;t heard of any Abdul Samad until last month. Who is he? I have been hearing his name everywhere these days, said Sulieman Mehmood Patel,a Dongri resident who too is out on bail.

My case is pending. I and the other accused are out on bail. I knew the other accused,Haji Imran Ghulam Mohammad and Afzal Shaikh,but never heard of this man before, said Patel,adding he was introduced to the others through a friend. I hear Samad is a young man who was caught for his role in the Pune blast. Suddenly I have my name appearing in the papers. I worry what the police will do next.

Asked if he has been questioned since Samad8217;s arrest,Patel said,I have not been bothered by the police yet.

Patel,in his mid-30s,does odd jobs and lives in Temkar Mohalla,the same locality where Dawood Ibrahim lived until the late 1980s when he shifted base to Dubai. I am struggling to make ends meet. It is not an easy life when you are branded an accomplice of someone like Chhota Shakeel, Patel said.

According to the ATS,Patel,Imran and Shaikh were arrested outside a hotel in Mazgaon with a foreign-made revolver and six live cartridges. Just three days after their arrest,the magistrate8217;s court sent them to judicial custody. They were let off on bail after lawyers argued their custody wasn8217;t needed for further investigation, said defence lawyer Amin Solkar.