Guilty Customs officials plead for leniency

Mumbai, Nov 3 (UNI) Two Customs officials, who were yesterday held guilty for their role in aiding the landing of arms and explosives in Raigad that were subsequently used in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts, today pleaded for leniency citing their poor financial conditions.

Sudhanwa Talwadekar, a dismissed Customs Superintendent, while urging the TADA court to lessen punishment today said he had already spent five years and seven months in jail and this period be considered as the conviction period.

Talwadekar, with greying hair, broke down before Judge P D Kode as he narrated his miseries after being dismissed from service in 1996.

He told the court that his wife and two children were solely dependent upon him and, after securing bail, had been able to sustain his family by starting an interior designing and decoration business. He could start the business after taking loans from his relatives, he said.

Dismissed Customs inspector Jaywant Gurav, who too was held guilty yesterday, also made a similar appeal to the court. He too urged the court to treat the period of five years and seven months that he had spent in jail as an undertrial before securing bail, as the conviction period.

He told the court that he was suffering from piles and hypertension and needed regular treatment for the same. After his dismissal from the service, he was making a living by selling vegetables, he told the court.

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