MUMBAI: A special MCOCA court in Mumbai has acquitted Aakash Bhaskar Shetty and William Albert Rodriques, alleged aides of fugitive gangster Ravi Pujari, in a 2018 extortion case involving threats to a city-based real estate developer and his relatives.
The duo had been accused of helping Pujari by supplying personal and contact details of the complainant, who received multiple extortion calls in November and December 2018 demanding ₹2 crore. In one instance, the gangster’s men allegedly fired shots to intimidate the complainant, leaving a note with Pujari’s number and death threats if the demand was not met.
The Mumbai Crime Branch had booked the two under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA), claiming they were part of a larger extortion racket run by Pujari. However, Special Judge Mahesh K Jadhav acquitted the accused on Tuesday, ruling that the prosecution failed to establish their involvement beyond reasonable doubt.
The court noted that the prosecution could not produce any call detail records (CDRs) showing communication between the accused and Pujari, or between Rodriques and Shetty themselves, regarding the supply of information about the complainant or his family. “The call record of Ravi Pujari is also not on record. In the absence of all this evidence, the prosecution has failed to prove the connection of the present accused with Ravi Pujari,” the order said.
Acquitting the duo, the court observed: “In the present case at hand from the oral and documentary evidence that came on record from the side of prosecution discussed above, this Court is of the view that the prosecution has failed to establish beyond reasonable doubt either by direct evidence or by circumstantial evidence.”
The defence had argued that the MCOCA provisions were wrongly applied and that neither accused actively participated in the crime. They further contended that Shetty and Rodriques did not gain monetarily from the alleged offence.
While discharging the accused, the court directed both men to execute personal bonds of ₹50,000 each and furnish sureties of the same amount within four weeks. A detailed chargesheet against Ravi Pujari has been ordered to be filed separately.
Shetty and Rodriques had spent over five years in custody before securing bail from the Bombay High Court last year after witness testimonies failed to support the prosecution’s version.
Pujari, a long-time associate of the Chhota Rajan gang who fled India in 1994, was traced to Senegal and deported to India in February 2020. He faces charges in at least 51 cases in Mumbai, including murder, shoot-outs and extortion. MCOCA provisions have been invoked in 20 of them.
Since his deportation, Pujari and several alleged associates have been acquitted in multiple cases. In May this year, he was cleared in the 1999 murder case of Anil Sharma, said to be linked to the Dawood Ibrahim gang. In April, a Thane MCOCA court acquitted six other men associated with him in a 2006 attempted murder case.