Mumbai: CBI has taken up five new cases against gangster Chhota Rajan, with two of them pertaining to his initial days as an alleged small-time bootlegger working for his mentor Rajan Nair over 36 years ago, officials said on Tuesday.
In one of the cases of 1980s, his godfather Nair aka Bada Rajan is also named as an accused with him, while another relates to his "filmy" car chase by police in 1983 in which he had injured two policemen who attempted to catch him, they said.
The other three cases pertain to abduction and extortion allegedly committed by his gang members on his orders in the late 90s and early 2000s.
On November 21 in 1980, Chhota Rajan along with his mentor Nair and accomplices Abdul and Ramesh Sharma had allegedly stabbed one Anthony Fernandes, who was waiting for a rickshaw at the Ram Narkar road in the evening.
Without saying anything, they attacked him with knives and escaped when he raised an alarm, the FIR registered by Mumbai Police on the complaint of Fernandes, states. Nair was reportedly killed in 1982, following which Rajan Sadashiv Nikalje alias Chhota Rajan took over the leadership of the gang.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has also taken over investigation in the 1983 case when Mumbai Police had arrested Chhota Rajan during an alleged bootlegging operation.
Police had tried to stop the taxi in which Chhota Rajan and his accomplices were allegedly smuggling liquor but they attempted to escape on the directions of the gangster, they said. In the hustle that ensued, two policemen tried to hold him inside the moving taxi when he attacked them with a knife.
