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Uttar Pradesh's Special Task Force has launched a manhunt for Mamta Tiwari, a reporter with a reputed electronic news channel in Lucknow, who has been working as a conduit for notorious underworld don Babloo Srivastava.
Babloo, once a Dawood hit man in India, is at present lodged in Lucknow jail.
The jailed don has been running his underworld network with the help of officials of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, who have been providing him cellular SIM cards, and journalists who have been working as a conduit for the gangster.
The lid on this nexus was blown off two days ago by UP's Special Task Force, which tracked down Babloo's network through electronic surveillance. The STF got to work after a Delhi-based businessman, Sheetal Singh, lodged a complaint saying he was being threatened by the gangster to let go of a multi-crore contract for high-security registration plates for cars. Sheetal Singh, incidentally, is also a former journalist who had earned Babloo's wrath about 10 years ago when he wrote an article in an Urdu weekly detailing the nexus between a top UP BJP leader and the gangster. Babloo had threatened the editor of the Urdu weekly and had warned him not to write about his nexus with the BJP leader.
The STF on Wednesday night arrested nine persons, including a prominent builder, a businessman and a former student leader who had been operating on Babloo's directives. The gang, according to STF sources, had planned to kidnap the son of Mumbai-based film financier K.C. Mohani and the brother of a businessman based in Kathmandu. The gang had even hired a house at Ashiyana Colony and had purchased some cars to be used in the kidnapping operations.
According to the SSP STF, Mr Rajiv Ranjan Verma, Babloo had been conducting his operations through his cell phone in the jail. Mamta Tiwari had been visiting the don regularly and used to pass on his messages to members of his gang. She had even helped him talk to his aides through teleconferencing on her mobile. It was Mamta who had used her clout as a journalist to get 11 BSNL SIM cards for Babloo. Her visits to the jail did not attract much attention since she used her journalistic activities as a cover.
Mamta, incidentally, is the daughter of Samajwadi leader Dharmanand Tiwari and was working for an English daily before she joined the electronic media in January. STF sources claim Mamta Tiwari's arrest could throw light on the nexus of some other journalists with Babloo since the tapes of conversations between Babloo and Mamta are interspersed with references and names of at least three other journalists.
Mamta Tiwari has been absconding ever since the STF bust the racket and her father now claims that she has been framed in the case because she intended to expose the STF's working. "We have sufficient proof about the girl and her nexus with Babloo and will reveal it at the appropriate time," the STF officials say.
The BSNL officials, on the other hand, have turned defensive in the case and are now refusing to cooperate with the STF. "We have sent them three letters seeking details of the 11 mobile SIM cards being used by Babloo but we have got no response. We even gave the BSNL officials guidelines for lawful interception and monitoring of telephone services but it has been completely futile," says the SSP STF.
Almost all the senior BSNL officials
contacted by this correspondent on Friday refused to speak on the issue.
The BSNL officials were also unwilling to give out the names in which these
11 mobile cards had bee purchased.
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