Now that Chhota Rajan is in custody, another gangster of the Mumbai underworld may be brought back to India in a month or two.
A top source in a premier intelligence agency told HT that a global hunt launched early this year to flush out some Indian gangsters from their hideouts abroad had met with a fair degree of success. “If everything goes according to plan, one more important fugitive mafia chieftain will be brought home back by the end of December,” said the source.
The gangster has been cornered in land-locked Botswana.
“He has been holed up in that country for quite some time after fleeing Australia,” sources said. Rajan, too, reportedly spent some time hiding in neighbouring Zimbabwe before moving back to Australia and then Indonesia, where he was arrested.
As per sources, Indian agencies stepped up their efforts to track down this gangster after he rattled the business fraternity and Bollywood through many extortion calls in the last few years. Between last year and early this year, he made more than 100 extortion calls to different personalities in Mumbai over VoIP lines, which he felt would mask his location, crime branch sources said. However, things came to a head after he started terrorising professionals and top-notch business honchos. As law enforcement agencies went on his trail, he went into hiding, sources said.
Additional commissioner of police, crime, KMM Prasanna, admitted that the fugitive’s extortion calls had stopped since the past few months. “We have not heard from him [extortion calls] in the past 3-4 months,” Prasanna said.
{{/usCountry}}Additional commissioner of police, crime, KMM Prasanna, admitted that the fugitive’s extortion calls had stopped since the past few months. “We have not heard from him [extortion calls] in the past 3-4 months,” Prasanna said.
{{/usCountry}}Sources said this fugitive used to earlier play second-fiddle to Rajan . However, he shot to prominence in the last few years on account of the changed gangland equations after the attack on Rajan in Bangkok in 2000.
Though Rajan survived, his gang witnessed several splits, with each faction vying for a share of the Mumbai underworld’s extortion pie.
Meanwhile, a senior crime branch official sought to dismiss apprehensions that the deportation of Rajan and the cornering of the other fugitive (who too is likely to be brought home back) would result in the resumption of gangland activities in the city.