By IANS
Bhopal : A Bhopal court Tuesday sent mobster Abu Salem, accused of forging documents for a passport, back to judicial custody till Dec 5 following the expiry of his police remand.
After being brought from a Mumbai jail last week, he was on police remand for the past seven days but the police could not elicit much from him during investigations.
“Since we haven’t got anything concrete against him so far, there was no need to keep him in police remand any more. If need be, we can again ask for it during the next hearing on Dec 5,” said Manisha Pandey, deputy superintendent of police (crime branch), who is investigating the matter.
“We didn’t require police remand any more at this stage and thus applied for judicial remand till Dec 5 and that has been granted. He will be taken back to Arthur Road Jail, Mumbai, from where he was brought here last week,” prosecution advocate Kedar Singh Kansana told IANS.
Salem’s lawyer P.C. Bedi — who had also contested a similar case against the gangster’s girlfriend Monica Bedi here — said: “They haven’t got anything against my client and the court has therefore allowed him to go back.”
P.C. Bedi had last week contended that Salem could not tried in the Bhopal court as per the conditions laid down by the government of Portugal — from where he and Monica Bedi were extradited in 2005 — but that contention was turned down by the court of Chief Judicial Magistrate Ajay Srivastava and Salem was remanded in police custody for seven days.
Five people — Abu Salem, his wife Sameera Jumani, one of Salem’s ex-associates Shiraz, his brother Abdul Kabir and Monica Bedi — were named accused in the case. While Monica Bedi and Abdul Kabir were acquitted, Shiraz had turned government witness. Salem and his wife are yet to face trial.
Srivastava acquitted Monica in August after a seven-month trial. She was accused in two separate fake passport cases — one each in Hyderabad and Bhopal.
Bhopal’s fake passport case was registered in November 2001.
Salem, his wife and Monica were issued passports under the names of Danish Baig, Rubina Baig and Fauzia Usman by the Bhopal passport office in June 2001.
The fraud was detected the same year after the UAE Police recovered one of these passports from Salem when he was detained there.