Extortion case: Relief for Bannanje Raja

Bengaluru: Bannanje Raja, a gangster who was extradited from Morocco in August 2015, was acquitted by a local court recently in an extortion and arms case registered against him by Upparpet police in 2014. But his associate

Sujit Poojari Kudkoli

was found guilty and awarded a jail term of two years and fined Rs 20,000 for illegally procuring a pistol. The prosecution failed to establish criminal conspiracy by Raja and

Kudkoli

to extort money from four businessmen in Bengaluru and also procure illegal firearms to use them to threaten their targets. “Documents produced on behalf of the prosecution failed to establish the fact of criminal conspiracy entered between accused no.1 (Raja) and accused no.2 (Kudkoli) for supply of arms and extortion of money. No supportive call details reports were produced by the prosecution to show that accused no.1 made threatening calls to demand money from the businessmen. The call details report is not sufficient to establish that threatening phone calls were made by Raja... Therefore, this court is of the opinion that the prosecution failed to prove the ingredients of the offences the accused duo is charged of,” the judgment reads. Central Crime Branch (CCB) police had arrested Kudkoli from Anand Rao Circle on April 25, 2014 and seized a country-made pistol and magazine from him. The prosecution alleged that Kudkoli worked for Raja and used to threaten businessmen for extortion on Raja’s direction. The prosecution only proved that the pistol was illegally procured by Kudkoli and hence, he was convicted under the Arms Act. Other charges against him, including extortion and criminal conspiracy, were not established. The 64th additional city civil and sessions court judge

Rajeshwara

had pronounced the judgment on October 22. This is the second acquittal in over 40 cases filed against Raja in Bengaluru. In April 2018, he was acquitted in a murder conspiracy case filed by High Grounds police. Raja , 50, was on the run for over 18 years in connection with criminal cases filed against him in Karnataka and Maharashtra. One of the sensational cases in which he was allegedly involved was the gunning down of BJP leader

RN Nayak

in Uttara Kannada district’s Ankola town in 2013. A red corner notice had been issued by Interpol and he’d been detained in Morocco on February 12, 2015 after he was found to be staying in that country under a fake identity. Subsequently, he was extradited to India in August the same year.