Solving Crime: How a ‘ghost-like’ Mumbai gangster was traced to Africa after he targeted Karnataka politicians for extortion

Pujari’s downfall began after he started targeting several politicians in Karnataka from 2015 to 2018 with extortion bids. This led the state police to initiate a concerted effort to find the “ghost-like gangster” who had maintained a high level of elusiveness by using technologies like virtual private networks (VPNs) and Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) to threaten his extortion targets.

Pujari’s arrest on January 19, 2019, and his eventual deportation to India to stand trial were facilitated by investigations and human intelligence gathered on foreign shores by using resources in Indian missions in African countries like Senegal, Ghana and Burkina Faso.

A tall task for the police

Ravi Pujari, who had positioned himself as a ‘patriotic gangster’, had been linked to the Dawood Ibrahim gang before the 1993 Mumbai blasts split it on religious lines. He was later linked to the Chhota Rajan gang that emerged in Mumbai.

When the Karnataka Police began serious efforts to track down Pujari, there was little information in West Africa about the gangster’s past or his continuing involvement in operating an extortion racket targeting businessmen, actors and politicians in India using local gangs that he built using his old networks.

Since 1994 when he disappeared after jumping bail in a Mumbai gangland murder case, Pujari was known to have travelled to Nepal, Bangkok, Australia, Uganda and western Africa but his exact location was not known in 2018.

Indian foreign officials in Senegal who were alerted about the presence of Pujari in the country sought the assistance of Senegalese authorities, including the country’s interior minister and the office of the President of Senegal. (Special Arrangement)

Tracking down Pujari proved to be a difficult task for the police since the gangster made extortion calls where the call records would show calls originating in the Pacific region, western Europe and Africa. Some police units allegedly being in cahoots with Pujari also did not help.

How Pujari was traced

A tip-off about Pujari being an investor in a restaurant chain called ‘Maharaja’ located in several West African countries set the police on the trail of the gangster in West Africa. The police found that Pujari had been living under the identity of Antony Fernandes in Burkina Faso and that he had probably moved over to Senegal.

Indian foreign officials in Senegal who were alerted about the presence of Pujari in the country sought the assistance of Senegalese authorities, including the country’s interior minister and the office of the President of Senegal.

One of the big leads in the efforts to find Pujari in Senegal came in early December 2018 from a local publication carrying a picture of Pujari alias Antony Fernandes at a local cricket event where he was heralded as a fine upstanding citizen and philanthropist.

Following this, the Indian authorities in Senegal were alerted by local officials and Fernandes aka Pujari was put under surveillance. The Karnataka police were also alerted to build the required dossier for the arrest and extradition of the gangster.

On January 19, 2019, when Pujari visited a local barber shop in Dakar, the local authorities swooped down and captured him. A year later, on February 22, 2020, he was handed over to Indian authorities and was brought back by a Karnataka Police team headed by then additional general of police (ADGP) (intelligence) Amar Kumar Pandey, who was assigned the task of finding Pujari in July 2018.

Targeting politicians proves costly

Shifting from a modus operandi of primarily targeting businessmen with extortion demands, Ravi Pujari allegedly targeted 10 politicians in Karnataka between 2015 and 2018. The politicians were Congress leaders U T Khader, Abhaychandra Jain, Ramanath Rai in 2015; H M Revanna in 2016; MP D K Suresh in 2017; Tanvir Sait, C M Ibrahim and Anil Lad in 2018; and Janata Dal (Secular) leaders S R Mahesh and C B Suresh Babu in 2017.

The mounting extortion threats resulted in the then Karnataka police chief Neelamani Raju assigning the task of finding Pujari and bringing him to justice to the then ADGP Pandey, who retired as director general of police in 2022.

In August 2017, Pujari allegedly targeted MP Suresh shortly after the MP and his brother, the current state Congress chief D K Shivakumar, were involved in guarding 44 MLAs from Gujarat ahead of a Rajya Sabha election in the state.

On June 22, 2018, a personal secretary of the former union aviation minister C M Ibrahim lodged a complaint of criminal intimidation with the Bengaluru police saying that a person claiming to be Pujari sent a message saying: “Don’t talk against the country or my people will…”.

Three years before his arrest, Pujari had moved to Senegal. “He shifted his base to Senegal where he started a restaurant named Maharaja but continued his extortion and threat business against people from the film industry, businessmen, real estate developers and professionals and also meddled in political activities,” Pandey said.

Major cases

By 2018, in Karnataka alone, 96 cases, including murders in some instances where businessmen had not succumbed to extortion demands, had piled up against the elusive Pujari. There were also dozens of murder, extortion and blackmail cases in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Kerala, and other states.

In Bengaluru, he was accused of involvement in the January 5, 2001 shooting of a real estate businessman Subbaraju in the heart of the city (he was acquitted in this case in 2022) as well as the February 15, 2007 shooting of two workers at the office of Shabnam Developers, a realty firm, whose owner allegedly resisted Pujari’s extortion bid (he is under trial in the case).

Extradition process

The identity of Pujari, who had assumed a new name, was established through fingerprints sent to Senegalese authorities. The paperwork for the extradition, including French translations of chargesheets where Pujari aides were arrested, was dispatched by March 2019.

In the absence of a bilateral extradition treaty with Senegal, the Indian government moved to extradite Pujari under the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (UNCTOC), adopted in the year 2000 as “the main international instrument in the fight against transnational organized crime”.

The cases filed against Pujari under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act facilitated his extradition under the UNCTOC and the Interpol Red Corner Notices issued for Pujari facilitated his arrest in Senegal. Pujari, 64 now, is in jail.

“We had come across some pictures of him on the Internet. But when we saw him in person it was kind of a mixed feeling of amazement and wonder,” Pandey said after the extradition in February 2022. “The long chase of this ghost-like figure has come to an end.”