3 gangsters held for firing at Bhiwandi hotel staffer

MUMBAI: The

city crime branch

claims to have foiled a Rs 1-crore

extortion bid

on a

south Mumbai businessman

with the arrest of five suspected members of the

Suresh Pujari gang

. During interrogation, police learnt that three of them were ‘active participants’ in the

Bhiwandi hotel firing

on January 10 where a 25-year-old female staffer was injured.

“The businessman complained of extortion calls from a man who claimed to be a Pujari gang member. The first call was on January 3,” said a crime branch officer. “In the second week of January, the caller threatened the businessman saying their gang was behind the firing at the Bhiwandi hotel, and hiked the extortion amount from Rs 50 lakh to Rs 1 crore,” he added.

DCP Dilip Sawant said, “On Friday, an anti-extortion cell team found two men loitering near the businessman’s office and detained them on suspicion. They confessed to having made the calls to the businessman. They led us to three more accused, who turned out to be the accused in the Bhiwandi firing case.” Those arrested were identified as Harish Kotian, Sanket Dalvi, Prathmesh Kadam, Noor Khan and Aniket Thakur.

On January 10, Swara Shirshath, who was employed as an administrator at the three-star Bhiwandi hotel, was seriously injured after two masked men threw a chit at the reception where she had come to check her email, shot her in the waist and fled in an auto parked near the hotel. Pujari’s name and his purported phone number were written in the chit. Sources said the hotel owner, Prakash Shetty, was receiving threat calls from Pujari since two years and he had filed a complaint. Police claimed Khan has admitted to have fired at the staffer and Kadam to flinging the chit. Thakur’s job was to collect information about the targets and keep a vigil on them, said police. “They had got Rs 75,000 each for the Bhiwandi firing,” said Sawant.