NEW DELHI: Kuala Lumpur is one of four prominent Southeast Asian capitals targeted by an Indian underworld don to lure wealthy Indian businessmen to nonexistent business deals before extorting them of huge ransoms.
Like a spider spinning its web, Chotta Rajan's henchmen operate a shadowy network spanning Bangkok, Dubai, Mumbai and Kuala Lumpur to trap their well-heeled victims.
Late last month, a Mumbai-based senior police official singled out notorious kidnapper Prakash Pande alias 'PP' as a high profile gangster reportedly based in Malaysia.
He said Pande used relatively unknown criminals from the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh to successfully execute major kidnappings of wealthy Indian businessmen.
On Thursday, the Headlines Today, an Indian news channel, in an expose, unraveled how Mumbai-based gangsters shuttled between Bangkok, Dubai, Mumbai and Kuala Lumpur, mainly targeting wealthy Indians.
"Chotta Rajan and his gang have devised new methods to extort money. An Indian businessman was flown out of the country to make business deals in Bangkok where he was kidnapped and held for a huge ransom," said the report.
Citing a recent example, the channel revealed how a millionaire marble businessman from the northern state of Rajasthan was lured to Bangkok in March this year and later demanded RM3.7 million (five crore Indian rupees) from his father.
The 28-year-old businessman's father was believed to have paid close to RM1 million for the release of his son.
According to investigative journalists who tracked the criminal nexus, the victim was flown from Mumbai to Bangkok, where Rajan's trusted lieutent Santosh Shetty was alleged to have kidnapped the businessman from the airport.
"They (the Indian mafia) have designed a sophisticated method to extort money from businessmen," the news channel reported.
The Mumbai-based gang war between Rajan and another Indian underworld don Dawood Ibrahim (now hiding in Pakistan), the two most wanted figures in Indian criminal records, has spilled over to Bangkok, Dubai and Kuala Lumpur.
In 2005, Dawood's key aide, Chotta Shakeel, another ruthless gangster, tracked down one of Rajan's henchman, Balu Dokre, and murdered him in Rawang, Kuala Kubu Baru.
A year later, The Hindu newspaper reported that an Indian underworld don, Fazalur Rehman, allegedly confessed to New Delhi police to having made threatening telephone calls from Malaysia to a saree tycoon at the behest of the parents of popular Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty. - Bernama
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