Mumbai's Esplanade court on Tuesday sent police officials Nand Kumar Gopale and Asha Korke to judicial custody for 14 days in Marine Drive extortion case linked to former city police commissioner Param Bir Singh.
The two police officers were on November 8 arrested by the state Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and were produced before the court the next day while demanding their custody.
During the hearing, the police officials were sent to seven days of police custody by a magistrate court.
The Special Public Prosecutor in the case Shekhar Jagtap stated that they have found a connection between the arrested accused and also traced the 'Hawala operator' identified as Momin who allegedly received Rs 50 lakh from complainant Shyamsunder Agrawal's son.
Gopale is currently posted at police training at Khandala while Korke is attached to the Local Arms division.
A reputed police officer from Mumbai police, Gopale was credited with solving many sensational cases. He investigated the IPL betting racket which led to the arrest of Gurunath Meiyappan, son-in-law of then BBCI president N Srinivasan. Gopale was also part of investigations of many other sensational cases including, the 26/11 terror attack case, Indian Mujahideen terror case, and journalist J Dey murder case.
Korke's lawyer has pointed out her clean record throughout her career while opposing the demand of custody and added that she has been cooperating with the investigation.
The Marine Drive police earlier in July registered an offense of extortion, threatening, and criminal conspiracy on the complaint by Mira Bhayandar-based developer Shyamsunder Agrawal who has multiple criminal cases registered against him.
As per his allegations, several crores of rupees had been extorted from him over several years for multiple reasons including not arresting him in an extortion case in which stringent Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) was also pressed.
He also alleged that his former partner Punamiya was a ‘close aide’ of Param Bir Singh and had extorted several crores from him.