Matka kingpin Prakash alias Pappu Sawla was arrested along with an accomplice by the Mumbai Police Crime Branch on Friday for threatening to kill a builder based in Borivali and attempting to extort Rs 33 crore from him. The police said Sawla, who owns several properties in Malad and Borivali, had entered into an agreement with the developer to develop a plot in Borivali in 2012. However, when the project did not take off, Sawla exited the agreement and agreed to pay a compensation of Rs 5 crore to the partner, the police said.
Over the years, however, the developer’s reminders for payment went unheeded and in September 2017, Sawla allegedly told him that he was unhappy with the terms of the agreement whereby he was required to make the payment.
A crime branch official said Sawla allegedly coerced the developer into making a fresh agreement in which he was to pay Rs 33 crore to Sawla. “The accused also forced to have his name alongside the complainant in the allotment letter for a 300 square feet plot in Kandiavli and was pressurising him into handing over possession of five commercial plots in an under-development building,” said the official.
Sawla, the police said, threataned to kill the developer’s wife and children if he did not co-operate. After receiving a complaint, the crime branch arrested Sawla (55) and his accomplice Raju Dubey (52) on Friday and booked them with committing extortion.
Sawla’s name had cropped up last year in the Thane Police’s investigation into an alleged extortion racket run by Iqbal Kaskar, the brother of fugitive gangster Dawood Ibrahim. The police had arrested Sawla’s former aide Pankaj Shah and alleged that he was Kaskar’s chief financier.
Sawla was also one of the accused in the murder of Shiv Sena corporator Kamlakar Jamsandikar by the gangster Arun Gawli in in 2006. He was booked for financing Gawli before being discharged from the trail by a special court.