Mumbai : The Mumbai Police on Monday thwarted the plans of four shooters who were planning to kill two businessmen based in Dombivli after receiving contracts from two different entities for the alleged elimination.
The alleged accused, Sanjeev Vashishtha alias Mannu alias Sharma (32), Rajesh Yadav alias Sagar (40), Manishkumar Pande alias Bhat (27), and Mahendra Dive (29) were arrested by the Anti-Extortion Cell (AEC) of the Crime Branch near R Mall in Mulund where they had met to plan their shootouts. “Two of the accused, Mannu and Pande are from Delhi while the other two are based in Mumbai. They had arrived in Mumbai to do a recce of the residences and offices of their targets. They were going to decide a future date for the shootouts,” said the spokesperson for Mumbai police Deputy Commissioner of Police, Dhananjay Kulkarni.
Police suspect that the contract for the shootout was given by the yet to be identified accused due to business rivalry. Both their targets were Dombivli-based businessmen, one of whom is a very popular builder-politician Ramesh Mhatre. The identity of the second target has not been identified yet, except for the information that he is a cable operator and owns a Renault Duster car.
Out of the arrested accused, Sagar and Mannu are friends since 2003 when they had met in a prison in Mumbai. The two were involved in the murder of Jaywant Mhatre, a deputy engineer working for the Kalyan Dombivli Municipal Corporation (KDMC), in 2005 and had disappeared after that. In addition, Sagar is also known to be an associate of fugitive gangster Ravi Pujari and was also involved in a case from April 2014 where the AEC had seized a carbine machine gun from Pujari’s gang members.
The mastermind in the case was the fourth accused, Dive who had been approached by a middleman to do the shootout. The middleman in turn had been approached by the accused persons who wanted their business rivals dead.
“Dive had got the rest of the accused together and also collected Rs 1.9 lakh from the middleman. The money was meant for procuring firearms – which Sagar and Mannu did from Meerut, Uttar Pradesh. Two sophisticated 7.65 bore pistols and 15 rounds were seized from the accused,” said a source from the Mumbai police.
After finishing the job, that is eliminating their targets, the quartet was going to receive Rs 10 lakh more. The police are investigating further into the case to trace the people who gave the contracts and the middleman who got in touch with the shooters. They are also determining if the arrested accused, who have been remanded to police custody until March 2, have links with any other underworld gangsters.
They Had Arrived In Mumbai To Do A Recce Of The Residences And Offices Of Their Targets. They Were Going To Decide A Future Date For The Shootouts
