MCOCA court pulls up jail authorities for strip searching accused
Mumbai: A special Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) court on Tuesday reprimanded prison authorities for strip searching Danish Ahmed, who along with Dawood Ibrahim’s nephew Sohel allegedly tried to work arms deals with Russian intelligence agents
Mumbai: A special Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) court on Tuesday reprimanded prison authorities for strip searching Danish Ahmed, who along with Dawood Ibrahim’s nephew Sohel allegedly tried to work arms deals with Russian intelligence agents.
The court has directed the superintendent of Arthur Road Jail to ensure no such incident takes place with any other prisoner.
Danish, a diamond broker from Delhi, had filed a complaint, claiming that a prison guard used abusive and filthy language while talking to him. He claimed that he was separated from the other prisoners and later the guards strip searched him when he was taken back to jail after attending a court date.
He had further contended that the prison authority can conduct his complete search, but making prisoners strip before other prisoners and staff was humiliating and using abusive language was illegal and a violation of his fundamental rights.
The prison authorities in its response claimed that on one of the previous occasions while taking the accused back to prison, guards had found several chits from his possession. The incident was reported to the court. The authorities claimed that keeping in mind the previous incident, the accused out of grudge filed a false complaint before the court.
The court however, found substance in the plea of the accused and said, “Searching guard is directed not to misbehave with UTP (under trial prisoner), accused Danish, not to humiliate him, making him strip in presence of others and not to use abusive and filthy language against the UTP. The superintendent of the prison is directed to take care that no such incidents shall repeat inside the prison with Danish or any other UTPs.”
Danish was arrested in connection with an extortion case, involving some members of Dawood’s gang. He has since turned approver and is being cross examined by the lawyers of other accused.
In his statement given in 2009, he had stated that after the death of Dawood’s brother Noora Ibrahim, Noora’s son Sohel became a close friend, and both of them moved to Russia where he worked with Russian agents. Danish said he would travel by Russian chartered flights to Belgium, Dubai, Uganda, Algeria, Venezuela and other places to meet prospective customers for Russian arms and ammunition.
In 2014, Danish and Sohel met three agents from the US Drug Enforcement Agency, who posed as Colombian revolutionaries seeking to purchase Russian arms for a revolt. After he showed them the pictures of the products on offer, they chose Igla infra-red missile launchers. After the deal was confirmed in June 2014, Danish and Sohel travelled to Spain to collect the advance and provide the ‘Columbians’ with three samples.
However, Danish and Sohel were arrested when they went to meet the US DEA agents in Spain. They were taken to Madrid, where they pleaded guilty and were extradited to the US after spending a year and a half in a Madrid jail. Danish was released from the US prison in September 2018 and deported to India.
