TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Mumbai, Jun 7: A sessions court has acquitted five men said to be involved in a plot to kill film producer Manmohan Shetty in May 2001. Shetty was then the owner of Adlabs Studios and, according to the police, members of Abu Salem gang were trying to extort money from him and when that failed they had decided to bump him off. 

There were seven accused in the case but the trial of the two who have already been acquitted was separated from the rest. Police said it had recorded conversations of Salem gang members in which they were planning to kill Shetty. Thereafter five men — Nurul Qadri, Salim Jamadar, Arif Akbar, Siraj Shaikh and Mohammed Ghous — were arrested in a trap laid by police at 

Fame Adlabs in Andheri. Some weapons and cartridges were also allegedly recovered from them. However, when the matter reached trial all five were acquitted for lack of evidence against them. The defence lawyers had cast doubts on the veracity of telephonic conversations that had been recorded by the police. The accused had been out on bail while their case was pending. 

There were two other accused in the case — Zamir Ahmed and Mushir Ahmed Iraqi — who were arrested from Azamgarh in March 2006. They were caught by the crime branch after Salem, who was deported to India only in 2005, said during his interrogation that the two of them had arranged for the weapons that were to be used in attacking Shetty. However, Ahmed and Iraqi too were acquitted last month for lack of evidence. 

Interestingly Salem himself was never tried in connection with this case. According to police officials Salem is being tried only for three cases against him in Mumbai as per the terms under which he was extradited from Portugal. The cases pertain to the ferrying of arms to Mumbai before the serial blasts of 1993, the murder of Manisha Koirala’s secretary Ajit Dewani and killing of builder Pradip Jain.