Infighting exposes best-kept secrets of Underworld Inc

MUMBAI: After a brief lull, Underworld Inc is back in the news with attacks on incarcerated gangsters and brutal killings of their trusted aides. Hearsay can do a lot of damage and friends turn foes in an instance. The Dawood Ibrahim-Chhota Rajan saga is a case in point and has become the talking point in the metropolis’ crime circles.
Rajan was a key lieutenant of fugitive don Dawood Ibrahim till 1993, after which the two friends gradually became sworn enemies.Some factions of the D-gang, especially the ones led by Sharad Shetty and Sunil Sawant aka Sautya, resented the importance given to Rajan by Dawood, who was based in Dubai at that time.
Sharad started poisoning Dawood’s ears against Rajan and alleged that three key Rajan aides—Sanjay Raggad, Diwakar Churi and Naresh Jukkar—often abused the don behind his back. An angry Dawood then decided to eliminate the trio without even consulting Rajan. Sautya was assigned the task of killing the three and he did so in Nepal in 1995. The next target was Rajan. However, Rajan got wind of the plan and relocated to Bangkok, where he was joined by his aides—Rohit Verma, Bharat Nepali and Santosh Shetty—in 2000.
On September 17, 2000, Rajan and his aides were attacked by the associates of Chhota Shakeel—Dawood’s Man Friday—in a Bangkok apartment. While Rajan survived, Verma succumbed to bullet wounds.
The Thai police were under the impression that Rajan was a businessman and had no clue about the motive behind the attack. It was then that Nepali, an ex-armyman, and Santosh, who was controlling the narcotics trade, threw a security ring around Rajan while the Thai police stood guard outside the hospital room where he was admitted. Fearing a second attempt on Rajan’s life by Shakeel’s men, Nepali and Santosh decided to get him out
of Thailand.
Nepali, with pulleys tied around his waist, brought Rajan down from the fourth stoyer of the hospital while Santosh waited in a car with a fake Thai army numberplate in the compound.
Santosh drove Rajan and Nepali to the Thai/Kampuchean border from where they boarded a chopper and flew to Siem Reap, Kampuchea. With the help of a fake passport, Rajan was flown to Tehran, where he was kept in a safe house for a year even as Dawood’s men continued to hunt for him in South East Asia.
After a year, Rajan moved back to Singapore. Rajan then decided to move to Europe and arranged for a fake UK passport. During a trip to Amsterdam, Rajan was detained and subsequently deported to Singapore for carrying a fake passport. Rajan was arrested upon his arrival in Singapora and Santosh bailed him out. He then “arranged” for Rajan to leave Singapore on a Indonesian Coast Guard ship.
All these details are now being recalled by members of the Santosh/Nepali gang, who claim that Rajan sidelined them over a “trivial monetary issue’’ despite all they had done to save him. However, Rajan’s contention is that the financial issue was not “trivial.’’ In any case, the Santosh/Nepali gang is now increasingly targeting Rajan’s men; the latest one being Farid Tanasha.
Rajan has decided not to take things lying down.