‘Satam, Pujari tipped off Chhota Shakeel to kill me’

MUMBAI: For the first time since 2011 after Santosh Shetty was extradited from Bangkok, the 52-year-old underworld gangster talked to Hindustan Times in an exclusive interview at a suburban mall in a phased manner on Sunday and Monday.

Like any trained intelligence operator, the neatly dressed gangster who was born and brought up in a plush locality of Mumbai, chooses the corner of a restaurant to hold his meetings. Shetty for the first time gave out intricate details on the attempt that Dawood Ibrahim had made to kill Chhota Rajan in September 2000 in Bangkok.

Rajan had managed to escape from the hotel’s roof after his lieutenant Rohit Verma shielded him and took 32 bullets on his body and shouted ‘Nana bhaag (run nana)’. Rajan is known as ‘Nana’ in the underworld.

Shetty claims that Rajan had made the first call to him and sought help. And Shetty claims, Rajan told him that it was his trusted lieutenant in Guru Satam and Ravi Pujari who tipped off his whereabouts in Bangkok to Chhota Shakeel. “I received a call from Rajan where he said that he was shot. He asked me to help him out. I asked him to which hospital was he being taken, but Rajan at that point did not know as Bangkok police was moving him to a hospital.” Shetty said that he later got a call from Rajan’s wife who told him about the hospital where Rajan was admitted.

Shetty claims that he along with Bharat Nepali, another lieutenant of Rajan, had rushed to the hospital almost immediately, and had found that Rajan was poorly guarded. “There were two policemen at some distance from the room where Rajan was admitted. And when I entered the room, Rajan handed me a tissue paper with ‘security’ written on it,” Shetty said.

Shetty claims that he along with Nepali sat in the hospital room for the entire night, before he got Rajan out of Bangkok using his contacts in the government.

And like Chhota Rajan, his earlier boss in the underworld, Shetty too claims to be a patriotic one and claims that he would do everything within his purview to ensure his activities benefits the nation. “I am not afraid of death. And I am willing to take any covert or overt operation to ensure it helps our country,” Shetty said.