The Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down the bail granted to gangster Chhota Rajan in the 2001 murder of hotelier Jaya Shetty, calling attention to his record of multiple convictions and long years as a fugitive.
A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta allowed the Central Bureau of Investigation’s plea challenging the Bombay High Court order of October 2024, which had suspended his life sentence and granted him bail.
Rajan, born Rajendra Sadashiv Nikalje in Chembur, Mumbai, was convicted in May 2024 and handed a life term for Shetty’s killing. He had secured bail on appeal months later. The CBI, represented by Additional Solicitor General SV Raju, argued that Rajan’s history of convictions—including two for murder—made him undeserving of such relief.
The Court noted that the gangster, who had been on the run for 27 years before being apprehended, could not be considered for leniency. "The man has four convictions; why suspension of sentence for such a man?" the bench remarked, dismissing the defence’s plea that Rajan had also been acquitted in several cases.
Also read: SC to hear CBI plea challenging Chhota Rajan's bail in murder case
The judges underlined that those acquittals were largely due to witnesses failing to depose against him, which in their view could not be grounds for suspending his sentence. The Court consequently ordered cancellation of Rajan’s bail, ensuring that he continues to serve his life term.
One of India’s most notorious underworld figures, Rajan once operated as a close aide of Dawood Ibrahim before a bitter fallout in the 1990s turned them into arch-rivals. He is believed to have fled India in the late 1980s, spending years moving across Southeast Asia under assumed identities.
Rajan was arrested in Bali in October 2015 following an Interpol red notice and deported to India, where he has since faced a slew of trials. In 2017, a special CBI court in Mumbai convicted him in the journalist J Dey murder case, sentencing him to life imprisonment. He has since been convicted in multiple other cases ranging from extortion to murder.
The latest Supreme Court order ensures that Rajan, once a feared name in Mumbai’s gangland wars, remains behind bars with little prospect of early reprieve.
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