Mumbai Police dossier ready since 1990, but India lost Munna Jhingada case over DNA samples

Although the Indian government was stumped when gangster Munna Jhingada refused to give his DNA sample, making it impossible for Indian agencies to prove to the

Although the Indian government was stumped when gangster Munna Jhingada refused to give his DNA sample, making it impossible for Indian agencies to prove to the Thai court that Jhingada was related to his immediate family in Jogeshwari (East), Mumbai Police had a dossier on Jhingada dating back to 1990.

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In February 1990, Sayyad Muzzakkir Muddasar Hussain, who would later adopt the alias of Munna Jhingada, was a second-year, undergraduate student of Ismail Yusuf College. He got into fights with a local bully named Wazir and on one occasion, Jhingada pulled out the chopper from Wazir’s waistband and stabbed him in the chest. The attack proved fatal for Wazir and Jhingada surrendered himself to the police. He was released on bail in November 1991, and started working for his father’s plumbing business.

However, Wazir’s brother came to avenge his death and in the clash that followed, Jhingada hit the brother on the head. Jhingada surrendered to the police after that attack, but Wazir’s brother and Jhingada kept getting into fights. When the brother was murdered in 1995, Jhingada fled to Uttar Pradesh and the police believe he started using country-made revolvers at this time.

On March 24, 1996, Oshiwara police arrested Jhingada and charged him with the murder of Wazir’s brother. In Arthur Road Jail, Jhingada met gangster Ismail Malabari, an associate of Dawood Ibrahim, who put him in touch with Chhota Shakeel. The first assignment that Shakeel gave Jhingada was to assassinate Arun Gawli at a rally in south Mumbai. With a guns hidden in bouquets, Jhingada got near the stage, but couldn’t breach Gawli’s security.

However, he soon became Chhota Shakeel’s trusted lieutenant. Among Jhingada’s successful hits was the September 1997 murder of money lender Kushal Jain, who was Chhota Rajan’s financier. Jhingada was arrested in 1997 for possessing illegal arms, but got out on bail and following in Chhota Shakeel’s footsteps, flew to Dubai.

In September 2000, Jhingada carried out an attempt to kill Chhota Rajan, who escaped with serious injuries, but Rajan’s right-hand man Rohit Verma was killed in the attack. Jhingada was not able to evade Thai authorities, who found a Pakistani passport on him that identified him as Mohammad Saleem. Jhingada was sentenced to 11 years in prison and towards the end of his sentence, India sought to extradite him. However, Pakistani authorities claimed Jhingada was a Pakistani citizen. In 2018, India won the extradition claim in a lower court in Thailand, but after Jhingada appealed, the matter went to a higher court.

Nineteen years later, India lost the case because Jhingada refused to give samples of his DNA – the Thai legal system does not allow drawing of samples without the subject’s consent – which meant the biological connection between Jhingada and his family in Mumbai could not be established. The Thai court accepted the Pakistani government’s plea that he was a citizen of the country, leaving Jhingada free to return to D-company’s fold in Pakistan.