‘Rajan reports led to J Dey’s killing’

MUMBAI: Gangster Chhota Rajan “effectively” began planning the murder of journalist Jyotirmoy Dey in May 2011 before having him killed on June 11 that year, according

MUMBAI: Gangster Chhota Rajan “effectively” began planning the murder of journalist Jyotirmoy Dey in May 2011 before having him killed on June 11 that year, according to a supplementary charge sheet filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

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According to the charge sheet, there were several instances in which Rajan warned Dey between January and March that year not to publish unfavourable stories about him.

Though the 237-page charge sheet was submitted in court on August 5, copies were given to the prosecution and defence only on Friday. In it, the CBI has charged Rajan with murder, criminal conspiracy and other crimes under the Indian Penal Code, Arms Act, Bombay Police Act and Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA).

The charge sheet also contains witnesses’ statements and forensic reports verifying Rajan’s voice samples from his conversations with aides and journalists. Based on these, CBI claims that Dey had been anticipating a threat to his life.

The charge sheet reveals that between January and March 2011, Rajan tried several times to dissuade Dey from writing unfavourably about him. In particular, he tried to prevent Dey from writing two books – one about the underworld, titled ‘Chindi: From rags to riches’ and another, untitled one about gangster Dawood Ibrahim, fearing the books would present him in a poor light.

Dey however, went ahead and published two stories about Rajan on May 30 and June 2, 2011 in the newspaper he worked with at the time. One of the stories looked at whether Rajan was behind the attack on Dawood’s brother Iqbal Kaskar in May that year, while the other said members of Rajan’s gang had done into hiding, fearing backlash after the attack on Kaskar, in which his bodyguard was killed.

These stories “enraged” Rajan and were the final provocation that led him to order Dey’s “early elimination”. Relying on call records of Rajan and the other accused, and on the confession of three of those accused, the CBI said that Rajan procured ammunition from his aides and co-accused Deepak Sisodia and Nayansingh Bisht in Nainital, and a global SIM card from another co-accused, Raviram Rattesar. Both are absconding.

Rajan, Sisodia and Rohit Joseph, the man who shot Dey, were in touch over the phone “between May 9, 2011 and June 6, 2011, while arranging for ammunition” and working out the details of the murder, it reads.

The accused began to monitor Dey’s movements from June 8. At 5.45 pm on June 10, Rajan called Joseph to give his “final order for the elimination,” it reads. “Being a leader of an organised crime syndicate, Rajan operated from abroad through latest means of communications… He, in connivance with his associates, illegally procured and possessed the firearms that he used for carrying out the gruesome killing of Dey.”

At the next hearing, scheduled for August 19, the court will fix a date to frame the charges, after which the trial will begin.