According to the prosecution, on April 6, 2019, a person walking near Chinchpokali police station was attacked by a gang and robbed of jewellery worth Rs 55,80,000.
The prosecution case was that gang leader Ayub Alimuddin Shaikh alias Ayub Chikna formed a crime syndicate with other co-accused and over many years, they committed offences of dacoity, assault, theft and robbery.
The police, during the investigation, found that the stolen jewellery had been bought by the jeweller and his father at a very low rate while knowing that they were stolen goods. They then melted the gold ornaments in a melting machine with the intention of destroying their identity and converted them into gold bars.
The prosecution’s case was that the jeweller was an active member of the organised crime syndicate and had another case against him.
Advocates Sandeep Karnik and Rohan Bhosale, appearing for the jeweller, pointed out to the court that the accused is a jeweller, so having a gold melting machine that the prosecution claimed to recover is not unusual.
They also pointed out that Chikna had 39 cases against him and none of them, except the present one, were in common with the jeweller. They said that the previous case against the jeweller was of criminal breach of trust, which had nothing to do with any gang activity.
The bench of Justices Revati Mohite-Dere and Gauri Godse saw that another accused in the case had been discharged from the case on the ground that there was nothing in common between the gang and the appellant.
The bench also pointed to the telephonic calls between the second wife of Chikna and the jeweller and said, “The jeweller and his father are admittedly running a jewellery shop. Thus, merely because the wife of the gang leader had called him; the same cannot, by itself, be said to be incriminating.”
Karnik said that a plea for a similar discharge from the case for the jeweller’s father too will be filed soon.
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