Regd. No. MH/MR/South-160/2012-14 RNI Regn. No. 43675/1985 MUMBAI MONDAY, JUNE 30, 2014 32 PAGES `3 Website: www.afternoondc.in
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25-year-old case of conspiracy to murder industrialist Nusli Wadia being heard in CBI court today By Philip Varghese
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ctor Preity Zinta and industrialist Ness Wadia have been embroiled in a controversy ever since Zinta filed an FIR on June 13 alleging that Ness, her former boyfriend of eight years and co-owner of IPL franchise Kings XI Punjab, had humiliated, abused and threatened her at a match on May 30 at the Wankhede stadium. Few days later, industrialist Nusli Wadia, father of Ness Wadia, was warned allegedly by underworld don Ravi Pujari indirectly via his employees, not to get involved in this case involving the actor and his son. Even though the Mumbai police has given security cover to Nusli Wadia, this is not the first time that the industrialist is locked in an encounter with the underworld. Wadia will depose at the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court in South Mumbai today in a case which dates back to 1989, wherein Wadia was almost murdered by contract killers, but the plot
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was uncovered by the Mumbai police before the act could be executed. Interestingly, the police has named Kirti Ambani, the head of public relations at Reliance Industries, as the prime accused in the case and the case became an example of the cut-throat textile war between Dhirubhai Ambani of Reliance and the Wadias, who own the Bombay Dyeing textile company. Sources informed that the trial is mostly over, except for Wadia’s deposing. Although the CBI initially felt that it did not need Wadia as their prosecution witness, senior counsel Mahesh Jethmalani, representing Wadia, spent a long time convincing the court that his statement would be important for the case. Accordingly, in the last hearing of
the case on April 30, the court finally granted Wadia permission to depose. In the 1980s, Nusli Wadia was already known as heir to the Wadia family businesses, of which Bombay Dyeing textiles was the most prominent. Dhirubhai Ambani, on the other hand, had grown from a modest entrepreneur to one of the biggest industrial tycoons in the country who made it big in synthetic textiles. In 1989, officials of the Mumbai Crime Branch got a tip-off about the plan by the underworld to eliminate Wadia. Their information led them to Arjun Babaria, a musician who called himself Prince Babaria and ran a band called 'Prince Babaria and his Orchestra'. “He was also known to the police as a 'fixer', or arranger of contract killings. Babaria had
allegedly appointed Ivan Sequeira, a relatively inexperienced killer, to do the job. However, the arrest of Kirti Ambani, who is not related to Mukesh's branch of the family, shook the business community. Kirti Ambani was arrested, along with Babaria, in August 1989. He was charged with hiring Babaria to murder Reliance’s rival,” sources said. Moreover, the crime branch also arrested a fourth suspect, Ramesh Jagothia and in 2003, the Sessions Court formally charged all four with criminal conspiracy to murder Nusli Wadia, which attracts death sentence if convicted. In their investigations, the police are said to have found several photographs of Kirti Ambani with Babaria, as well as pictures of Wadia and his car. philip.varghese@afternoondc.in