Mumbai: The Bombay High Court on Wednesday granted bail to mafia don Rajendra S. Nikalje, alias Chhota Rajan and suspended his life sentence in the case of the sensational murder of Mumbai hotelier Jaya Shetty in 2001.
On May 30 this year, a Special MCOCA Court pronounced Rajan and others guilty of the sensational murder and handed down his second sentence of life imprisonment in the past nearly nine years.
However, Rajan is unlikely to be released as he has already been convicted and is serving a life sentence for the 2011 daylight killing of a crime journalist, Jyotirmoy Dey, at Powai, which he is serving in New Delhi’s Tihar Central Jail.
Rajan had filed an appeal against the life sentence, which is now suspended by a division bench of Justice Revati Mohite-Dere and Justice Prithviraj K. Chavan until the outcome of the high court plea. The court also granted him bail.
India’s IT Ministry Slams X For ‘Abetting Crime’ After 100 Flight Bomb Threats
Shetty, the owner of the Golden Crown Hotel in south Mumbai, was shot dead by two gunmen on May 4, 2001, with the hit ordered by Rajan, a bitter rival of the absconder terrorist don Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar, triggering a huge sensation in the hospitality and political circles.
After the lengthy trial, the Special MCOCA Court Special Judge A. M. Patil found Rajan guilty and sentenced him to life in jail, along with other accused Rahul Pansare, Ajay Mohite, and Pramod Dhonde.
Shetty had become a victim in an alleged extortion case and had been provided with police security, which was withdrawn a couple of months before he was targeted and killed. Incidentally, the Shetty murder case was among the dossier of 71 major offences that were handed over by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to the Indonesia government after Rajan was nabbed in the tourist haven of Bali and subsequently deported to India in November 2015.
For more updates Subscribe to Media Eye News
–IANS
File photo after his arrest in Indonesia in 2015.
