A plastic bottle packed with dead insects that gangster Ejaz Lakdawala brought to court to demonstrate the circumstances in his jail cell in order to get a mosquito net made quite a stir. However, the ruse failed, and his request for a net was denied.
On Thursday, a sessions court in this city denied the appeal made by Lakdawala, a former associate of wanted gangster Dawood Ibrahim who is accused of many crimes, including violating the Maharashtra Control of Organized Crime Act (MCOCA). Lakdawala was detained in January 2020 and has since been housed at the Taloja jail in neighbouring Navi Mumbai.
His application for authorization to use a mosquito net had just been submitted to the court. According to Lakdawala’s plea, he was given permission to use a mosquito net in 2020 while he was remanded in court custody, but the jail officials took the net in May of this year due to security reasons.
When Lakdawala was brought before the sessions court on Thursday, he displayed a plastic container containing dead mosquitoes and said that the Taloja jail’s prisoners deal with this issue every day. However, the jail staff refused to accept the plea, claiming security concerns. The petitioner (Lakdawala) might use Odomos and other insect repellents, the court observed while denying the plea. In addition to Lakdawala, numerous other indigent defendants from the Taloja jail have also submitted such applications.
The request was granted in certain situations while being denied in others. One judge authorised the use of a mosquito net by the gangster DK Rao, while another judge refused to authorise it for a few defendants in the Elgar Parishad-Maoist connections case, and the prison administration was instructed to take all necessary measures to reduce the mosquito problem. The application for authorization to employ a net that campaigner Gautam Navlakha submitted in September of this year is still waiting.
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