Ahmedabad: The Anti Terrorist Squad (ATS) of Gujarat police has nabbed four people including the main shooter acquainted to gangster Ravi Pujari in connection with the recent attack on an independent councilor of Borsad municipality in Anand district of central Gujarat, ATS SP Himanshu Shukla said today.

The SP however said that it was not yet proved that Pujari was part of the conspiracy to attack councilor Pragnesh Patel who is still under treatment.

Congress MLA from Borsad constituency of Anand district in central Gujarat Amit Chavda had also lodged an FIR in Borsad police station on January 15 about alleged phone-call threats to him by a man who identified himself as notorious underworld don Ravi Pujari.

‘We have nabbed the main shooter Suresh Pillai a native of Tamilnadu, who fled to Thane in Maharashtra his current place of residence after the incident. He then received a phone call from Pujari who reportedly said that he would take the blame on him for the incident. However, we have nothing so far to indicate that Pujari was involved in the conspiracy of the crime. Another man from UP based in Surat was involved in firing incident. Two persons from Anand, who arranged the firing owing to personal animosity with Patel have also been nabbed,’ the ATS SP said.

Suresh had fired 3 shots at Patel on January 12. The CCTV footage of the incident was also recovered. Patel was admitted to a hospital in Vadodara.
Shukla said that other aspects of the incident were being probed.

Patel was earlier associated with BJP but contested the local body polls in November 2015 as an independent candidate.

MLA Chavda had in his FIR said that he received two calls on his mobile phone from different foreign based numbers (+97516 92585 and +4050485725) on January 14 when he was as his sister’s place in Gandhinagar. The caller claimed that he was Ravi Pujari speaking from Australia and threatened to kill him if he did not stop giving tv interviews about the firing incident. The caller also said that he had arranged the attack on local councilor Pragnesh Patel.

DeshGujarat