After three bail rejections at different levels of the judiciary, Deepak Mankar, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) corporator and former deputy mayor, finally surrendered before the Pune police on Wednesday.
The Supreme Court had rejected his bail plea on July 23. Mankar is facing charges of abetment to suicide of a city-based land dealer.
He was immediately booked under the stringent Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA). A local court later remanded him to three days police custody in the case.
Mankar had approached the Supreme Court after his anticipatory bail application was rejected by a local court as well as the Bombay high court. After the bail application was rejected by the apex court, he was granted 10 days’ time to surrender and then apply for bail. However, with MCOCA being invoked in the case, it will now prevent Mankar from being granted bail.
Pravin Mundhe, the outgoing deputy commissioner of police of Zone-2, said, “This was bound to happen. We were not able to catch him as someone with such a tight record is aware of where the police will be looking for him.”
The lawyer appointed by the Jagtap family had filed a private caveat mentioning 15 previous cases against Mankar.
DCP Mundhe agreed that Mankar’s arrest would have been an uphill task had the Supreme Court granted relief to the city-based politician.
Mankar was booked after a suicide note was found in the office of Jitendra Haribhau Jagtap, 53, whose body was found in multiple parts after being hit by a train in Hadapsar. His son, Jayesh Jagtap, 28, filed a case after he found a suicide note at his father’s office located on the piece of land under dispute. Five people were arrested in the case for threatening the deceased to give up the land on the day he was found dead.
A case in the matter was registered under Sections 306 (abetment to suicide), 506 (criminal intimidation) and 34 (common intention) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) at the Pune railway police station. The case was later transferred to the Samarth police station.
Prasanta Patnaik