Santosh Ambekar, six others booked for extortion

NAGPUR: Goon turned real estate dealer Santosh Ambekar and five others were booked by Ambazari police on Friday on charges of extortion, wrongful restraint and some offences under the Arms Act. They had allegedly threatened builder Jeetendra Chavan at gunpoint on December 14 inside Ambazari police station. Several cops too are under the scanner for allowing Ambekar to threaten Chavan inside the police station.
Ambekar, now learnt to be preparing to fight the forthcoming assembly elections, had threatened Chavan to cough up Rs 65 lakh inside the detection branch wing of Ambazari police station.
Though action against Ambekar and his accomplices has been initiated, the police officials who allowed the goon to settle the dispute in the police station premises in a questionable manner have been spared till now. TOI had exposed the incident in its December 16, 2013, edition and also published a photograph of Ambekar and co-accused Yuvraj Mathankar walking out of the police station. Mathankar too has been earlier booked for murder on a couple of occasions, before he turned to the real estate business.
Ambekar had slapped Chavan and threatened the builder to withdraw his claim on a property at Ambazari layout. Chavan had purchased the property from Rahul Wasnik for around a crore a year back. Rahul had been missing for several months, and is still untraceable. Rahul's wife Poonam, now named as co-accused with Ambekar, had filed a missing complaint about her husband.
On December 14, there had been an attempt to evict Poonam from the house purchased by Chavan and BJP MLA Khusal Bopche's son Ravi. After this, the matter came to the police station where Ambekar had stepped in to ensure an 'amicable' settlement.
Apart from Ambekar, Sanjay Fatode, Gautam Bhatkar, Akash Borkar and some of their accomplices have also been named as accused in the case. Two cheques, worth Rs 30 lakhs and Rs 35 lakhs, had been issued in favour of Poonam by Chavan at the instance of Ambekar. It is learnt Poonam had also filed a complaint against builder Chavan for trying to forcibly evict her from the house but no offence has been registered in that complaint.
Chavan, who had gone underground following the settlement saga at the police station, surfaced on Friday to furnish his version before joint commissioner of police Sanjay Saxena.
Saxena said action has been initiated by Senior PI Anil Katkade of Ambazari police station, who was directed by city police chief KK Pathak to look into the matter. "We would go through the documents and details of the case and, if necessary, action would be initiated against cops too," said Saxena.