Mumbai: Police inspector wanted in extortion case held

The police inspector Om Wangate wanted for allegedly demanded extortion from angadias or traditional couriers has been arrested on Thursday.

As per the sources, Wangate appeared before the Criminal Intelligent Unit (CIU) of the Mumbai crime branch on Thursday evening after the Bombay High Court (HC) refused to grant him anticipatory bail on Wednesday. Subsequently, the PI has been arrested and will be produced before the court on Friday, said a crime branch officer.

An offence of extortion was registered against Wangate and API Nitin Kadam and PSI Samadhan Jamdade of the L T Marg police station after angadias complaint of extortion, they have also levelled allegations against DCP Saurabh Tripathi of zone 2 for his involvement. As soon as the FIR was registered Kadam and Jamdade were apprehended the same day but Wangate remained elusive.

After the offence was registered Tripathi was transferred to the post of DCP operations however Tripathi has since then gone on leave and yet to take the charge.

In their allegations, the angadias association have claimed that the arrested officers had detained a few angadias on multiple occasions in the month of December and allegedly extorted money from them by threatening to book them or tip the Income Tax department about their activities.

The member of their association met then Mumbai police commissioner Hemant Nagrale and complaint about the illegal activities of the policemen. The commissioner then ordered the additional commissioner of police of the South region to investigate the allegation, the additional commissioner Dilip Sawant is also the complainant in the case.