Pujari’s confession offers glimpse of don’s descent into underworld
MUMBAI: Raviprakash Sulya Pujari, known in the Mumbai’s underworld as Ravi Pujari was a fugitive for 25 years before he was brought back from Senegal in 2019, but he operated his network in Mumbai through a man based in Iran and another contact based in Malaysia. Close associate and jailed gangster Yusuf Bachkana provided shooters and probable targets, 53-year-old Pujari’s confessional statement read.
HT has seen a copy of the confession which Pujari recorded before a deputy commissioner of police in Mumbai on March 4, 2021 — it would be a key piece of evidence that will be used in his trial before the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) court, which is yet to begin.
Pujari, whose primary source of income was extortion, is wanted in over 200 cases across the country. He is currently lodged in a jail in Karnataka; at least 51 cases are registered against him in Mumbai. The city police have applied the provisions of MCOCA in 20 of them. The gangster, who fled the country in 1997, is suspected of attempting to extort filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt in 2006, among other film personalities.
His statement to the Mumbai police reveals how he ran his extortion racket from the Senegalese capital of Dakar, where he had been living with his wife and children since 2014.
Born on February 18, 1969 in Malpe, in the Udupi district of Karnataka, Pujari came to Mumbai when he was two years old after his father, who worked as a clerk with the Shipping Corporation of India, was posted to the city. He has four siblings — two brothers and two sisters — and they lived in Marol, an industrial part of the north eastern suburb of Andheri. Pujari studied up to class 10. The confession offered a comprehensive overview of Pujari’s descent into crime.