Hacker's lawyer gets threat call from gangster Ravi Pujari

Mumbai: The lawyer of a hacker, who had accused former Maharashtra minister Eknath Khadse of receiving calls from underworld don Dawood Ibrahim's Karachi residence, has alleged she got a threat call from gangster Ravi Pujari.

In her complaint to Pune Police Commissioner, hacker Manish Bhangale's lawyer Gitanjali Lokhande on Monday claimed that on the afternoon of April 1, she received a call on her mobile phone from a man who identified himself as Ravi Pujari.

"The caller threatened to kill me and my family if I continued to appear as Bhangale's lawyer. He (caller) said they will first kill Bhangale and then me and my family," the woman said in her complaint.

The caller claimed that last month he had got a lawyer in Bengaluru killed and that she would be next if she does not withdraw from the case, Lokhande said.

The advocate has sought police protection for herself and her family members.

When contacted, Pune Police Commissioner Rashmi Shukla said Lokhande has approached them and they will look into her complaint.
Bhangale was arrested by the Mumbai cyber crime cell on March 31 on charges of forgery and cheating.

According to police, he had allegedly created a fake mobile bill on a computer to show call records between Khadse and Dawood's residence in Pakistan.
Last year, Bhangale had filed a petition in the Bombay High Court seeking CBI probe into the alleged phone calls exchanged between Dawood and Khadse.

Bhangale had claimed to have hacked the authentication process of Pakistan Telecommunication Company Ltd in April last year from where he acquired the telephone records of Dawood.

The HC had later disposed of the petition after Maharashtra's Anti-Terrorism Squad told the court that its preliminary inquiry revealed no calls were exchanged between Khadse and Dawood.

Khadse, who held several key portfolios in the state Cabinet, had resigned in June last year after facing a string of allegations including irregularities in a land deal.