In a bizarre move, the Mumbai crime branch on Friday arrested senior journalist Jigna Vora, working with The Asian Age, in connection with the Jyotirmoy Dey murder case. Though its claim was that Ms Vora passed on information about Dey to underworld don Chhota Rajan, the police told the court while seeking her custody that it wanted to investigate how the information was sent.
Ms Vora, held under MCOCA, is the 11th person to be arrested in connection with the July 2011 murder. Opposing the prosecution’s demand of 14 days’ police custody for Ms Vora, senior lawyer Girish Kulkarni, representing Ms Vora, said the police was just seeking her custody to fill in evidence that it did not have.
“The police is yet to find out how the information was given out to Rajan. Ms Vora is being made an accused merely on the basis of the interview she had conducted with him. The entire content of the interview was published in the newspaper on May 26 this year. There are many methods available to scan gadgets like cell phones and computers, which the police could have easily done by this time. The entire case of the police is based on an assumption. Talking to a crime syndicate does not mean that you are a part of it unless there is evidence to support this,” Mr Kulkarni said, asking that Ms Vora be put in judicial custody.
After considering the arguments, special MCOCA judge S.M. Modak remanded Ms Vora to seven days’ police custody.