A Delhi court on Monday issued a fresh production warrant against underworld don Abu Salem after the Mumbai Police failed yet again to produce him in a five-year-old extortion case.
Metropolitan Magistrate Sandeep Yadav directed the Arthur Road jail authorities in Mumbai to produce the extradited gangster before the court on November 21.
The Special Cell of the Delhi Police had registered a case of extortion and criminal intimidation against Salem and his alleged associates Ishtiyaq Ahmed and Chander Prakash in 2002.
The trio is accused of making extortion calls to one Rajat Nagrath, a south Delhi-based businessman, and demanding a ransom of Rs 1 crore. The Chief Metropolitan Magistrate had issued a production warrant against Salem on September 27. An FIR in the case, based on Nagrath's complaint, was registered at the Lodhi Colony police station in south Delhi.
Ahmed and Prakash are lodged in Bhopal jail while Salem has been kept at the Arthur Road jail in Mumbai.
Salem, who was extradited from Portugal in 2005, is also one of the accused in a MCOCA case registered in 2002 for allegedly attempting to extort Rs 5 crore from a Delhi-based contractor. A separate Delhi court, trying the MCOCA case, had also issued a production warrant against him for November 3.
On October 12, Salem had attended the funeral of his mother Jannatunisha, who died in Azamgarh district in Uttar Pradesh, after being granted permission by a court in Mumbai.