8 years after bid on slain Sena man’s life in Kandivli, 1 of 3 accused held

MUMBAI: Eight years after a bid was made on the life of Shiv Sena deputy shakha pramukh Sachin Sawant, police have arrested one of the three key accused from Daman. Sawant, who had a narrow escape in 2010, could not survive the second firing on him in April 2018. The motive in both cases was a dispute over slum redevelopment, though the accused in the first case have no links with those in the second.
Sawant was coordinating between residents and a developer for the Gokul Nagar-Durga Nagar slum redevelopment project in Kandivli East.



On June 29, 2010, a group of men barged into Sawant’s office, located next to his house at Gokul Nagar, and opened fire at him. Sawant ducked and the bullet brushed his waist. The crime branch arrested two people on conspiracy charges but the shooters—Karfusingh Dakkhansingh, Jainendra Singh alias Bebu and Samarbahadur Yadav—were never traced. Sawant’s family was bitter about the police’s inability to take significant action in the 2010 case which they said emboldened criminals to attack him in 2018.

The shooters in the 2010 case were all residents of Kandivli. They moved out of the locality and kept changing their location as the cops were on their trail. “We managed to track down some relatives of Yadav who were in touch with him. Through the phone numbers they provided, we tracked down Yadav to Somnath in Daman. He was brought to Mumbai earlier this week," said an official from Kurar police. The police are still looking for Karfusingh and Jainendra Singh.

After the bid on his life, Sawant was rushed to a hospital by associate Nilesh Sharma. The two grew close. Later, Sharma started to feel that Sawant wasn’t paying him the money he deserved. The duo severed ties. After a public clash with Sawant during an SRA survey on April 11, 2018, Sharma joined hands with one Brijesh Patel and plotted Sawant’s murder. Patel wanted to dent Sawant’s business and gain supremacy in the SRA project. Seven people, including Patel and Sharma, were arrested in May for Sawant's murder.