A sessions court has denied interim bail to Vijay Palande -- accused in three murder cases. Palande had filed these based on grounds of the Coronavirus pandemic. His temporary bail pleas filed through advocate Prashant Pandey had stated that there is an outbreak of Coronavirus in Taloja jail where he is lodged. The 47-year-old is prone to illness due to his age. He has been in custody since April 2012, it stated and that his incarceration while the trial will take time, amounts to an unwarranted pre-trial sentence. The pleas had also cited overcrowding in prisons as one of the grounds.
Special public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam appearing for the crime branch in two of the cases opposed the bail plea, arguing that Palande is a habitual offender and the offence is serious. Additional Public Prosecutor Ramesh Siroya, opposed the plea filed in another case and told the court that the recommendations of the High Power Committee do not apply to such cases and that he may abscond if released.
Palande had been convicted in 2002 for the murder of Swaraj Ranjan Das and had escaped while on parole the following year. He was arrested in April 2012 for being the alleged mastermind in the murder of senior citizen and Delhi-businessman Arun Tikku in his residence in Oshiwara. Tikku is also the father of a character-actor Anuj Tikku. The motive behind the murder is allegedly the 1,500 sq. ft. flat in the name of his son Anuj, where the murder took place. The senior Tikku was apparently being a hurdle in letting Palande grab the flat.
During the investigation of Arun Tikku murder case, Palande is said to have confessed to killing a month earlier, 28-year-old aspiring film producer Karan Kakkad in his Lokhandwala residence. Palande, along with accomplices are said to have chopped Kakkad’s body into pieces and disposed of it in Kumbharli Ghat in Satara-Goa Road. Money and some personal reasons were behind the murder, as per the Detection Crime Branch - CID that investigated the cases. The skull found with the decomposed body of Kakkad in the ghat did not belong to him. Hence a case of murder of an unknown person was also registered against him.
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