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3 months on, CBI starts probe with just one case against Chhota Rajan
Three months after Maharashtra Police transferred 71 cases against deported gangster Chhota Rajan to the CBI, the agency has registered just one fresh FIR due to logistical issues.
Three months after Maharashtra Police transferred 71 cases against deported gangster Chhota Rajan to the Central Bureau of Investigation, the agency has registered just one fresh FIR due to logistical issues.
The delay is because most cases against Rajan are “over 25 years old which make the task of collecting relevant police records, in coordination with local police authorities, time-consuming and challenging,” said a CBI source.
“Some cases had reached the trial stages. Records pertaining to the original complainants and witnesses are to be gathered,” said the source. “There is no delay on our part.”
The Maharashtra government had transferred the 71-odd cases on November 19 to the CBI.
The only case the CBI was able to take up pertains to the murder of Mumbai crime journalist Jyotirmoy Dey in June 2011 by bike-borne assailants.
CBI said it registered the FIR in the Dey case on January 5 this year. Rajan has denied any role whatsoever in the case.
The CBI brought Rajan via deportation from Indonesia ---on November six, 2015 ---where he was arrested by local authorities on the basis of a pending Interpol Red Corner notice against him. The requirement of translating police records from Marathi to English was also delaying the process of filing FIRs in the other 70 cases, another CBI source said.
Some in the agency are also apprehensive that in a handful of cases, including those concerning extortion demands, the investigators might be waging a losing battle to retrieve the “old documents,” he said.
In the Dey case, Mumbai Police’s FIR didn’t name Rajan but included him as one of the two absconding accused in a subsequent chargesheet submitted in a local court.
CBI did not name him in its FIR, but could do so when it files a chargesheet if the probe proves his alleged complicity.
On Rajan’s arrival via deportation, the agency took him in custody in the case registered by it related to his alleged fraudulent procurement of an Indian passport in 2003.
The CBI submitted its chargesheet against Rajan on February 3.
