Bombay High Court refuses pre-arrest bail to Vasai Viral municipal councillor booked for extortion

Bombay High Court. File pic

The Bombay High Court on Thursday rejected an anticipatory bail application of Dhananjay Gawade, a municipal councillor from Nalasopara, who has been booked for extortion. According to police, Gawade used information obtained under the Right to Information Act to extort lakhs of rupees from local builders.

While rejecting the anticipatory bail plea of the 45-year-old councillor, justice Sandeep Shinde said, "In the case in hand, the material clearly suggests and points out his complicity in the offences alleged against him which are serious in nature."

According to a report in Hindustan Times, ten offences were registered against Gawade, who is a sitting councillor of Vasai Viral municipal corporation. The offences have been registered at various police stations in Palghar and Thane districts between March 3, 2018, and April 12, 2018.

However, Gawade had moved to high court for an anticipatory bail in all the cases, claiming that he was actually a whistleblower who had exposed links between senior civic officials and the builders' lobby. He claimed that he had filed public interest litigations either himself or through his associates seeking the demolition of illegal and unauthorised constructions in Vasai Virar municipal area.

He further said that now the police, municipal officers and the builders' lobby have ganged up against him by filing multiple FIRs. Justice Sandeep Shinde refused to accept the claim after noticing that "tangible material was available on record, which on evaluation suggested that information in relation to the construction of the building, sought under RTI was allegedly used against erring or offending builders to extort the money from them.

"In other words, the applicant being a city corporator and as it appears, not only abused the Right to Information Act for his personal gains, but also breached the trust of the citizens who elected him their representative on local municipal authority," justice Shinde observed while rejecting Gawade's anticipatory bail applications.

The HC further added that the evidence on record also "disclosed complicity of the officers of the corporation either by extending the protection to unauthorised construction, or turning Nelson's eye to it."

"...Not only officers of the corporation, but also editors of local newspapers exploited the situation to gain out of it," the bench stated.