3 Chhota Shakeel associates held

Mumbai Crime Branch foils bid to kill Jogeshwari businessman

Three associates of underworld gangster Chhota Shakeel have been arrested by Anti Extortion Cell of Mumbai Crime Branch on April 20. The sleuths have also recovered two 7.65 bore pistols, 12 live cartridges, five extra magazines, two surgical blades, six mobile phones besides several other incriminating articles.

“A reliable information was received by the Ant-Extortion Cell officers that three associates of gangster Chhota Shakeel were to meet near Meena Hotel in Jogeshwari (W) with fire arms and ammunitions and would be making plans to kill a businessman in the western suburbs,” said Joint CP (Crime) Atulchandra Kulkarni.

“Necessary intelligence networks were executed, help of analysis was taken and previous cases of similar nature of this gang and their methodology were studied.

And after an elaborate effort the AEC officers were able to trap three persons red handed. All of them were actively working for organized crime syndicate of gangster Chhota Shakeel,” he added.

Kulkarni further added that all the three people including Michael John D’souza (42), Naim Faim Khan (40) and Nitin Gopal (28) were regularly meeting to hatch a plan to kill a well known business man.

The plan was foiled by the extensive efforts of Sr. PI Vinayak Vast, PI Dhiraj Koli, API Santosh Natkar, etc among senior officials including Addl CP (Crime) KMM Prasanna, and DCP (Detection) Dhananjay Kulkarni.

The ring leader of among the three associates is Jogeshwari resident D’souza, who is already accused in eight criminal cases of assault, attempt to murder, extortion, etc and the all the cases have been registered against him at Oshiwara police station.

The 40-year-old Khan, resident of Goregaon, is a driver by profession and Gopal is a local goon from Jogeshwari. The case has been registered at Amboli Police station and the trio has been booked under relevant sections of IPC and Arms Act.