Mumbai: Owners of '1 Above' pub arrested for Provident Fund default

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Three owners of a tony pub gutted in the Kamala Mills Compound blaze were today arrested for not paying their employees' Provident Fund (PF) dues, police said. Kripesh Sanghvi, his brother Jigar and their partner Abhijeet Mankar, the owners of '1 Above' pub, were arrested by the N M Joshi Marg police, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP), Zone III, Virendra Mishra, said.

The three had allegedly not paid PF dues of Rs 8.65 lakh that they owed their employees. A case was registered against them under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Provident Fund Act, he told PTI. The case was registered after the Kamala Mills fire and the arrests were made today, the DCP said. The three were already in custody in the Kamala Mills fire case and had now been arrested in the PF payment default matter, police said. They were booked under IPC sections 406 (criminal breach of trust) and 409 (criminal breach of trust by public servant, or by banker, merchant or agent), and section 14 of the PF Act (filing prosecution against defaulters), they said. The trio were produced before a court which remanded them to police custody till February 10, said N M Joshi Marg police station senior inspector Ahmed Pathan.

The Sanghvis and Mankar were arrested in connection with the December 29, 2017, fire at the Kamala Mills in which 14 people were killed and over 21 injured. '1 Above' and another pub Mojo's Bistro were gutted in the devastating blaze. The pubs shared a common terrace. The two brothers and Mankar were charged with culpable homicide not amounting to murder, among other offences, police had said.

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