After over a year’s struggle, the State police will soon be bringing fugitive underworld operative Ravi Pujari to Bengaluru.
Praveen Sood, DG&IGP, confirmed to The Hindu that a team of police had gone to Senegal to secure his custody and will be back soon to probe the pending cases.
The team has gone to Senegal to complete the extradition procedure. Once it is completed, he would be brought to the city, he said.
Pujari, wanted in many criminal cases, including extortion and murder, has been on the run for the last 15 years. The police had issued several red corner notices against him, following which he was arrested in Senegal last year. But owing to a technical problem, the court granted him bail.
However, he was arrested again recently by the Senegal police and handed over to the police team that went to complete the extradition formalities.
The accused, who was earlier working with Chhota Rajan and Dawood Ibrahim, split up and started his own gang. The gang, which operated in Bengaluru and Mangaluru, would gather information about wealthy people and hand it over to Pujari. He would then call the businessmen demanding protection money by dropping details of their property, business, and family members. He would also threaten them by opening fire.
In a similar modus operandi, in February 2007, a gunman wearing helmet walked into the office of Shabnam Developers owned by the then Tilak Nagar councillor Samillulla after he refused to pay ransom and fired indiscriminately killing an office assistant and a receptionist on the spot. The city police had arrested 11 persons and charged Pujari as the prime accused in the case.
Bommai confirms
Meanwhile, Home Minister Basavaraj Bommai said in Mysuru on Sunday that efforts were on to bring Pujari to Bengaluru.
He said the State officials along with their counterparts from the Centre were completing legal formalities. The top court of Senegal recently upheld the extradition of Pujari, who was on the run to evade the law in India where cases are pending against him.