Kendrapara: Kendrapara Town police on Saturday took gangster Syed Usman Ali alias Tito on a two-day remand for interrogating him in connection with a murder case.
The Sub Divisional Judicial Magistrate (SDJM) court, Kendrapara, allowed the police to take the gangster on remand in the case for interrogation and further investigation into his alleged involvement in the murder of engineer Debashish Sahoo at Chakada village in Kendrapara district on December 21 last year.
Tito had allegedly gunned down the engineer after he refused to pay him an extortion amount of Rs 10 lakh.
The SDJM court, Cuttack, had on Wednesday allowed its plea to make the gangster a party in the tender fixing and extortion cases registered against him by Chauliaganj Police in March 2016.
Government advocate Biswajit Baral had said the Chauliaganj police had registered a number of cases against Tito on whose instructions his henchmen used to collect huge extortion money from local businessmen and looted the state exchequer to the tune of over crores by fixing the tenders floated by the Mahanadi Barrage Division, Drain Division, Roads and Building Division and other construction works of the government.
“Apart from this, there are allegations that the gang members used to threaten and collect extortion money from the private bus owners plying on Cuttack-Paradip and Cuttack-Jagatsinghpur routes. In this connection, the police have arrested eight associates of Tito and filed chargesheets against them,” Baral had added.
Stating that the cases against Tito are currently in the Kendrapara SDJM court, he said the process of producing him the Cuttack SDJM court in the aforesaid cases would be taken up very soon. The Cuttack SDJM court has asked its Kendrapara counterpart to spare the gangster for some days and allow the police to produce him before its court in connection with the case registered by the Chauliaganj police, he had pointed out.
