Ravi Pujari detained: Mumbai Crime Branch to seek arrest warrant today

Ravi Pujari was detained in Senegal on January 22

The arrest of fugitive gangster Ravi Pujari's has sent the police of three Indian states into a frenzy for his custody, with the Mumbai Police collating all his crime records to secure his custody. The police have also approached the Metropolitan Magistrate Court to seek an arrest warrant against Pujari, with a hearing scheduled for today.

Pujari was first detained in Senegal's capital city Dakar on January 22 after a tip-off from Indian intelligence agencies. On January 23, he was arrested by the central bureau of the Interpol.

Crime Branch swings into action
The Mumbai police crime branch has prepared a list of crimes in which Pujari is wanted, to be produced in the court today, with focus on the serious crimes. One such entry is that of a case registered with the Anti-Extortion Cell in 2017, where a property developer had allegedly used Pujari's services to settle a dispute in an SRA project. Besides builder Vikrant Vardani, Pujari's aides Dashrat Shinde and Sunil Jadhav alias Daya were arrested in the case under charges of threatening and extortion.

Across India, Pujari has cases of extortion, murder and ransom registered against him. Before being nabbed, he had established himself as a hotelier on a different identity and was allegedly running his infamous underworld racket from Senegal.

Pujari had been on the run for two decades with many Interpol notices issued against him. Once a right-hand man of fellow gangster Chhota Rajan, he had settled in Senegal after Rajan was arrested from Bali, Indonesia in 2016.

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