By Raju Vernekar
Mumbai, Sept 13:
A 49 year old Gym instructor Palash Bose, who had recently made threatening telephone calls, to Maharashtra CM and other leaders, masquerading as an associate of absconding mafia don Dawood Ibrahim, was arrested by Maharashtra ATS from Kolkata, on Thursday.
Bose had made threatening call to Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, Nationalist Congress Party President Sharad Pawar, Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh and Shiv Sena chief spokesperson Sanjay Raut.
Bose was arrested from his residence at Tollygunge in South Kolkata and was produced in a Alipore court on Friday. Public Prosecutor Subhendu Ghosh told the court that he had made threatening calls to Maharashtra leaders, in the name of underworld don Dawood Ibrahim between 02 September and 06 September 2020. However the telephone operators at the residences of these leaders had not connected the calls sensing a foul play.
Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut was the only person to take a call on 06 September, during which Bose told him to leave the actress Kangana Ranaut alone (who is embroiled in a controversy with the Shiv Sena) and get off the Sushant Singh Rajpur death case.
Bose’s lawyer, Anirban Guha Thakurta, told the court that the IP address through which his client allegedly made VoIP calls had been “possibly hacked” to frame him. As such he be granted a bail. However the court rejected the bail plea and gave Mumbai Police a four-day transit remand.
Later in a statement, Thakurta said “Palash Bose, a resident of Tollygunge, has been arrested on Thursday night by Mumbai Police allegedly for a threat call to Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut. It has been alleged that Palash is a supporter of Kangana Ranaut, and so this threat call.”
Using technical intelligence, the Mumbai Police nabbed Bose and brought him to Mumbai. The probe is now being handled by the Anti Terrorist Squad (ATS). The operation was carried out by a crack team of ATS comprising Inspector Daya Nayak, APIs Dashtra Vitkar, and Sachin Patil, and constable Dhiraj Rane.
“On the basis of sources` information, we conducted the operation with the help of Kolkata Police to zero in on the accused and arrested him. We have seized two mobile phones, one Indian and three international SIM cards. He has confessed to the crime in our preliminary interrogations,” said an ATS official.
A BSc graduate, Bose had worked in Dubai for around 15 years and now the ATS is probing his possible links with any crime syndicate after he admitted to making landline calls to Thackeray, Pawar, Deshmukh, and Raut using his international SIM numbers earlier this week.
The police are probing how got so many international telephone numbers. They are also probing his connections with Kangana, and what might have provoked him to make threatening calls. Bose will be produced in the court in Mumbai on Monday, September 14.
Bose’s arrest comes at a time when there is increasing friction between Kangana and the Shiv Sena over her recent tirades at the Mumbai Police and the MVA government in Maharashtra, after which on September 9, the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) razed her “illegal office” in suburban Bandra in North West Mumbai.
