Chaturvedi granted bail

Builder Rajendra Chaturvedi, who was arrested for an alleged conspiracy to eliminate a rival, Rashmikant Shah, on March 15, was granted a bail of Rs50,000 on Wednesday. Chaturvedi was charged with conspiracy to kill Shah of Vijay Group in order to gain control of  a Rs500-crore SRA redevelopment project at Abhyudaya Nagar Colony in connivance with one Baba Udaynath Maharaj, who had allegedly given supari for the purpose.

Additional sessions judge P D Vishwasrao granted Chaturvedi bail, as an examination all the police papers and diaries did not point to a conspiracy, as alleged. A perusal of police diaries of March 7 showed that the Shah himself had threatened the senior police inspector with dire consequences, if the latter did not act “as per his instructions”. Shah had allegedly barged into the detection room during Chaturvedi’s interrogation and threatened the inspector in the name of his superiors, including the Zonal DCP and Additional Commissioner of Police. He also demanded that Chaturvedi be arraigned under MCOCA immediately without further investigation.

Later, for three days Shah allegedly refused to give his statement to the police, on the pretext that he will speak only to the police commissioner, thereby impeding the course of investigation itself. Most importantly, Shah was neither assigned the redevelopment work of Abhudaya Nagar, nor does not have the required consent of the residents, alleged Chaturvedi. The alleged motive for the alleged conspiracy does not even exist, he added.

Arguing that Shah’s case was false, Chaturvedi’s advocate Ishwari Bagaria said, “Although Shah has alleged being threatened by Chaturvedi in person, by pointing a gun to his head, it is strange that he should not have recognised Chaturvedi when he barged into the detection room. “Neither my client nor Shah had even an inkling as to who the other person was,” said Bagaria, “Yet Shah claims having met my client, having had a difference of opinion with him and that Chaturvedi had drawn a gun on him.”

The prosecution alleged that four arrested accused implicated one Udaynath Baba Maharaj who lived at Abhudaya Nagar and Chaturvedi as the persons on who hired them to kill Shah. Two of the four arrested accused had sought an audience with the magistrate and told him that they had been falsely arrested.