Days after arresting three police officers for allegedly extorting money from angadias or traditional couriers the Mumbai police on Tuesday made the zonal Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Saurabh Tripathi as an accused in the case.
The Crime Intelligence Unit (CIU) investigating the case produced inspector Om Wangate before the court on Tuesday, in the remand application Tripathi's name was mentioned as a wanted accused. Wangate who was arrested on Thursday was third accused to be arrested in the case, earlier the police had arrested API Nitin Kadam and PSI samadhan Jamdade all attached to the L T Marg police. Both of them are currently in judicial custody while Wangate's police custody has been extended by four days.
After the offence was registered Tripathi was transferred to the post of DCP operations however Tripathi has since then went on a leave and yet to take the charge. The Free Press Journal tried contacting Tripathi however his phone remained unreachable.
According to the police, in their allegation the angadia association claimed that the arrested officers detained few angadias on multiple occasions in the month of December and allegedly extorted over ₹18-20 lakh from them by threatening to book them or tip the Income Tax department about their illegal activities.
After several such incidents the association members approached Tripathi, who was then DCP zone 2 however he didn't took cognisance of their complaint leaving the association members to approached then Mumbai police commissioner Hemant Nagrale who then initiated an inquiry.
The inquiry was given to additional CP (South) region Dilip Sawant to investigate, Sawant is also complainant in the case.
