Mumbai, March 19: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) team met newly-appointed Mumbai Police Commissioner Hemant Nagrale at his office on Friday and are understood to have discussed the ongoing probes into the SUV case.

The NIA team comprised IGP Anil Shukla and SP Vikram Khalate, while joining Nagrale were Joint CP (Crime) Milind Bharambe and DCP (Detection) Akbar Pathan. Official sources described it as a ‘courtesy call’.

An NIA team has also surveyed the elite Crime Intelligence Unit (ICU) of the Crime Branch which functions under the city police chief and handles some of the most sensitive cases, many of which were handled by the arrested-suspended Assistant Police Inspector Sachin Vaze in the last one year or so.

In a related development, a forensics team arrived from Pune to conduct specialised tests on the 6 cars seized by the NIA in the past few days, including a SUV Scorpio, 2 Mercedes, a Toyota Land Cruiser Prado and other models.

Triggering a massive political furore, the SUV Scorpio was found abandoned outside Antilia, the home of industrialist Mukesh Ambani, along with 20 gelatin sticks and a threat note, with the NIA saying that Vaze was using the other luxury vehicles.

Similarly, Thane businessman Mansukh Hiran, whose body was found in the Thane Creek marshes near Mumbra and death is being probed by Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) also reportedly used the Scorpio and some of the other seized high-end cars, details of which are not yet available.

(IANS)