Murdered Shiv Sena corporator Ashok Sawant’s daughter claims family being threatened

In a letter to Mumbai Police, Ashok Sawant’s daughter has also claimed that her father was killed by rivals who wanted to gain control over his cable television business. (Express Photo by Amit Chakravarty/For representational purpose)

The daughter of a former Shiva Sena corporator, who was shot dead in Kandivali in January, has claimed that she has received threats to the safety of her family. In a letter to Mumbai Police, she has also claimed that her father was killed by rivals who wanted to gain control over his cable television business. Ashok Sawant (63) was shot outside his home on January 7 by three men sitting in an autorickshaw who were waiting for him to return. The police has so far arrested six persons, among them a juvenile, while the main suspect, Jagdish Pawar, is untraceable.

Sawant’s daughter Prajakta Sawant Vishwasrao, however, is unhappy with the pace of the investigation by the Samta Nagar police station. On Tuesday, she sent a letter to the Deven Bharti, the Joint Commissioner of Police (Law and Order), claiming that the conspirators behind the murder had threatened her family with dire consequences.

In her three-page letter, Prajakta, who was a Shiv Sena corporator in the R-South Ward between 2012 and 2017, wrote, “… The grievance of my family is that the local police have failed to unearth the larger conspiracy behind the murder of my father. The motive cited by the arrested accused in the case is vague and indigestible. Over a period of time it has been unravelled that the real cause of the brutal killing of my father is the struggle to gain supremacy in cable television in the area.”