Ghatkopar hoarding collapse: Court denies pre-arrest bail to business partner of IPS officer’s wife

MUMBAI: The sessions court on Tuesday rejected the anticipatory bail plea of Arshad Khan, the purported business partner of suspended additional director general of police Quaiser Khalid’s wife, in the May 13 Ghatkopar hoarding collapse case, in which 17 people died and 74 were injured.
Subsequently, the court rejected the bail plea of Janhavi Marathe, former director of Ego Media, who owned the illegal hoarding near the BPCL petrol pump in Pant Nagar in Ghatkopar East.
Public prosecutor Iqbal Solkar had submitted that Marathe conspired with the railway police commissionerate, various Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) officials, and others to set up the hoarding on Government Railway Police (GRP) land. Further, it was alleged that Marathe neglected the hoarding’s structural integrity and prioritised financial gain, leading to the accident.
The prosecution said that Khan’s name emerged during Marathe’s interrogation when she revealed that Ego Media had issued several blank cheques to Khan in 2021 and 2022 when Khalid granted approvals to erect oversized hoardings without calling for tenders.
Khalid, according to the police, was permitted to set up the 140X120-feet hoarding in Ghatkopar in 2022, hours before the end of his term as commissioner of the government railway police (GRP). However, the maximum permissible size of hoardings as stipulated by the BMC was 40×40 feet.
“During the investigation of the crime, it was found that accused Bhavesh Bhinde and the complainant Janhavi Marathe, directors of Ego Media Pvt Ltd, paid lakhs of rupees to Arshad Khan to obtain permission for the collapsed hoarding and to extend the contract period for the three hoardings adjacent to the accident site”, the prosecution had submitted earlier, opposing Marathe’s plea.
Khan allegedly convinced 12 people in Govandi to allow him to use their bank accounts to deposit cheques, which he subsequently withdrew over time, as per the 3,299-page chargesheet filed by the crime branch in July.
So far, the Specia Interrogation Team (SIT) has arrested four people including, Bhavesh Bhinde, the owner of Ego Media, Janhavi Marathe, the former director of Ego Media, Manoj Ramkrishna Sanghu, a BMC-approved engineer who provided a safety certificate for the structure, and Sagar Kumbhar, the contractor who erected the hoarding. Out of the four, Sanghu and Kumbhar are out on bail, while the court has rejected Marathe’s plea. While Khan is currently absconding, Marathe was arrested in Goa on June 8, along with the contractor Kumbhar.