The Bombay High Court on Monday confirmed gangster Arun Gawli’s conviction and upheld the life sentence awarded to him for murdering a Shiv Sena corporator Kamlakar Jamsandekar in 2007.
A Division Bench of Justices B.P. Dharmadhikari and Swapna Joshi was hearing an appeal filed by Gawli on September 25, 2012. On August 31, 2012, the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act court convicted him under Sections 302 (punishment for murder), 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention), and 452 (house trespass after preparation for hurt, assault or wrongful restraint) of the Indian Penal Code.
Gawli, a contract killer-turned-politician shot Jamsandekar on March 2, 2007, at Ghatkopar, along his gang members — Sunil Ghate, Suresh Patil, Pratap Godse, Sandeep alias Sandy Gangan, Shrikrishna alias Babu Gurav, Vijaykumar and Anilkumar Giri, and Sahebrao Bhintade. Gawli was also a Akhil Bharatiya Sena MLA from Chinchpokli.
In this case, Gawli’s aides implicated him in the murder. Gurav, who was not involved in the action, gave vital information to the police and Gangan turned an approver. It is only then the Mumbai Police were able to establish that two builders — Bhintade and Bala Surve — who were Jamsandekar’s rivals, paid Gawli ₹30 lakh to have the councillor killed in a land dispute.
It was the then joint commissioner, Rakesh Maria, and the then deputy commissioner, Deven Bharti, who arrested Gurav in 2008.
They managed to get the two shooters record their confession statements against Gawli.
Gawli was first lodged in Arthur Road jail, then shifted to Thane’s Taloja jail in 2010, then Nagpur central jail in 2015, and is now at Yerwada jail in Pune. He had applied for a furlough to DIG (Prisons) on December 15, 2016. Currently, Gawli has a 2008 extortion trial going on before a sessions court.
The Mumbai Police had raided Dagdi Chawl, residence of Gawli, where he operated his underworld activities several times, and arrested him in many cases.
