'A cop slapped my face twice'

Another witness in the Ambani chopper sabotage case alleges he was assaulted during interrogation

Another witness in the Ambani chopper sabotage case alleges he was assaulted during interrogation

Four employees of Airworks, the company that maintains Anil Ambani's helicopter, had worked on the chopper on the day the pebbles and sand were found in it. They were technician Bharat Borge (who discovered and reported the sabotage), cleaners Uday Varekar and Palraj Tevar, and engineer Rajaram Chauhan.

Are we criminals? Cleaners Uday Varekar and Palraj Tevar claim they were treated like petty criminals by the crime branch officers. pic/ketan ranga

After Borge's "suicide note" revealed that he had backed off from making a statement when he witnessed police brutality at the Crime Branch office, one of the cleaners told MiD DAY that the police had hit him too.

Said Tevar, "A cop slapped my face twice, as I told them I did not know anything about the case. They were forcing us to say that we knew something. They kept us sitting at the crime branch like criminals."u00a0

Said Varekar, "The Crime Branch called all of us for questioning. We were made to sit for hours. The police officer questioning us kept insisting that we had seen the people who put the stones in or we were the ones who had done it. They told us it was not possible that we didn't know anything about the sabotage attempt.

Even while questioning Borge they said he must have seen someone and was hiding the truth."

Both cleaners alleged that the Crime Branch had questioned them like accused in a case and not as witnesses.

Now, Borge's mysterious death has left the two even more worried. Like them, they said, Borge too had been under a lot of pressure and worried about the police investigation.

He had even called his friend Anil Shinge, a doctor in Satara, some eight times.

Security lapse
Air Works employees revealed that the CCTV cameras have not been working for some time now. There have been several cases of thefts and other mischief in the sensitive zone.

The case so far...
The Government Railway Police will now be questioning the Reliance officer who had visited Borge. The Crime Branch said the sabotage investigation was on track and they would soon solve the case