Chhota Rajan gets life sentence in hotelier’s murder case

Mumbai: A Mumbai court on Thursday sentenced gangster Chhota Rajan to life imprisonment in the 2001 murder case of a Mumbai hotelier. Two alleged gang members of rajan’s syndicate had shot dead hotelier Jaya Shetty on May 4, 2001.

Judge AM Patil, presiding over a special court for cases under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA), found Rajan guilty under Indian Penal Code section 302 (murder). While awarding the life sentence to the gangster, the judge held that he was involved in a conspiracy, along with four others, to kill Shetty.

Mumbai Police had filed a charge-sheet before the Special MCOCA Court against three accused persons — Ajay Suresh Mohite alias Ajay Nepali alias Chickna, Pramod alias Bala Ramesh Donde and Rahul Pansare. In the said charge-sheet, four accused persons including Rajendra Sadashiv Nikalje alias Chhota Rajan, Hemant Pujari, Kundan Singh Narsingh Rawat and Sameer Ashok Manek were shown as wanted accused.

While the court has already convicted Mohite, Dhonde and Pansare, the CBI filed supplementary chargesheets against Rajan and Manek. Pujari is still a wanted accused in the case. Another wanted accused Kundan Singh Narsingh Rawat was killed in an encounter with police.

Shetty, who owned four restaurants in Mumbai including Golden Crown hotel in south Mumbai, was shot dead in front of his office by two unidentified people on May 4, 2001. It is alleged that Shetty was killed for refusing to pay extortionists the ransom amount.

The manager of the hotel and another employee had managed to run behind the shooters and catch one of them.

Soon after Shetty’s murder, Rajan’s close aide Hemant Pujari allegedly called the hotel and threatened to eliminate the hotelier’s entire family if the ransom money was not paid.

Rajan, who was operating his crime syndicate from foreign soil for more than 20 years was arrested at Bali airport in Indonesia in October 2015 and was deported to India. He is facing nearly 70 criminal cases in India including the infamous murder case of journalist J. Dey, who was allegedly shot dead by Rajan’s men in 2011.

A special MCOCA court had convicted Rajan and his eight associates and sentenced them to life imprisonment in the Dey murder case. The Maharashtra government has handed over the investigation into all cases against Rajan to the Central Bureau of Investigation. He is currently lodged at Tihar jail in Delhi.

Apart from Dey and Shetty murder cases, Rajan has also been convicted in three other cases investigated by CBI pertaining to extortion and attempt to murder and sentenced to Rigorous Imprisonment of 10 years, eight years and two years under various sections of IPC and MCOCA.