Pradeep Sharma Alleged To Have Made Rs 3000 Crores,

Encounter ace sacked for underworld links

Inspector Pradeep Sharma Alleged To Have Made Rs 3,000 Cr From Dealings

S Ahmed Ali | TNN

Mumbai: In one of the toughest actions against corrupt policemen in recent times, the state government on Sunday dismissed high-profile encounter specialist Pradeep Sharma from service for his links with the underworld. Inspector Sharma, once the blue-eyed boy of the city police and who has 112 encounter killings to his credit, was served a notice of dismissal at 1 am on Sunday.

Although convinced about his underhand activities, the police knew that it would be difficult to prove them in court. Therefore, the government invoked Article 311 of the Indian constitution whereby an officer can be dismissed without holding an inquiry in such situations. This is also one of the rare cases in which the deputy chief minister took an active interest in ensuring the dismissal of a police inspector.

Sharma is the latest in a series of encounter specialists who have been neutralised. Sub-inspector Daya Nayak, Nitin Vichare, Ravindra Angre and Praful Bhosle are all facing various inquiries. The only exception is inspector Vijay Salaskar, who is posted with the crime branch.

Sharma was once the darling of the media with his pictures being flashed widely after every encounter that he carried out. Sharma has denied the allegations and will challenge the dismissal order in the Maharashtra Administrative Tribunal.

The dismissal proposal prepared by Gafoor was lying with DGP A N Roy for the past month.

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GOOD COP, BAD COP

Who |
Inspector Pradeep Sharma, 47, Mumbai’s ‘encounter specialist’ credited with gunning down 112 gangsters and other suspects in a career spanning 25 years

1983 |
Sharma joined the police force as a sub-inspector. His first assignment was at Mahim police station. Two years later, he was transferred to the special branch and then to Juhu. In 1991, he joined Ghatkopar police station

1990s |
Sharma came in contact with the Chhota Rajan gang. In 1996, Sharma and his subordinate, Daya Nayak, were booked on charges of kidnapping a scrap dealer and extorting money from him

2004 |
The downfall begins with Sharma taking charge of the crime branch’s Kandivli unit. He was accused of colluding with the underworld to broker land deals and settle extortion threats involving builders and businessmen in the western suburbs
The final straw was his name being linked to the custodial death of Khwaja Yunus. Sharma was transferred to Amravati but he reported sick. He was last shown posted at Dharavi

WHAT NEXT|
Sharma plans to move the Maharashtra Administrative Tribunal for relief
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THE RISE AND FALL OF PRADEEP SHARMA

AN ENCOUNTER WITH TROUBLE:

Government Pulls The Dismissal Trigger On High-Profile Inspector

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Mumbai: Dismissed encounter specialist Pradeep Sharma, who came from a humble background, is a wealthy man today.

Sharma’s first assignment was at the Mahim police station. After two years, he was transferred to the special branch, then in Juhu. In 1991, Sharma came in contact with professor Arun Singh of Jhunjhunwala College in Ghatkopar, who had links with the drug mafia and was the brother of former Chhota Rajan gangster O P Singh. Sources said Arun Singh was shot dead by the Ashwin Naik gang. Soon, O P Singh, who was Sharma’s informant, took over his brother’s drug business.

Singh grew close to the Rajan gang in 1992, when underworld activities were at their peak. In 1996, he was transferred to Chandan chowky (also known as “extortion chowky”), which was under the jurisdiction of then DCP Satyapal Singh. It was here that Sharma and his team, including sub-inspector Daya Nayak, allegedly kidnapped scrap dealer Tariq Nabi and extorted Rs 2 lakh from him. Both Sharma and Nayak were accused in the case.

The killing of O P Singh changed the equations. Sharma allegedly shifted his loyalty to Dawood aide Chhota Shakeel through the latter’s brother-in-law, Arife Aboobakar.

Sharma made a mark when he was posted as senior inspector in the Crime Intelligence Unit, Andheri. He shot to fame when he killed dreaded gangster Vinod Matkar. Later, he eliminated several prominent gangsters, including Vinod Matkar, Parvez Siddiqui, Rafiq Dabbawala, Sadik Kalia and three LeT men. He claims that in his 25 years of service, he has gunned down 112 criminals in socalled encounters. “He managed to extract information from hardened criminals, where even his colleagues failed,’’ an officer said.

In 2004, when Sharma took charge of the Kandivli unit of the crime branch, there were several allegations about his settling extortion threats received by businessmen and using threats to resolve land disputes. Soon, then police commissioner M N Singh disbanded Sharma’s cell.

The real trouble started when his name cropped up during the investigation of the custodial death of Khwaja Yunus. The CID filed a report that he should be transferred out of the city as he was hampering the probe. “There was evidence to show that on the day Yunus’s body was disposed of, Sharma called up his seniors and subordinates to discuss the issue. We failed to nail him because we could not prove that the mobile used by Sharma was in his name,” an officer from the CID said.

Sharma was shifted to Amravati on a CID report. But he went on leave on medical grounds. In 2006, he was posted at the DN Nagar police station, where allegations of Sharma helping the real estate mafia in land-grabbing cases cropped up. He was transferred to the control room in 2007.

Ex-IPS officer Y P Singh said, “It’s a correct order. When it’s reasonably well-known that a person has clandestine links with the underworld, it’s not practical to conduct an inquiry.” Sharma is the sixth officer to be dismissed in the last five years. The other policemen included Aslam Momin, who was dismissed for his alleged nexus with Chhota Shakeel. Milan Koyal (crime branch) was axed on similar grounds.

THE START OF THE FALL

Whispers about his deals started growing. By 2004, when Sharma had taken over the charge of the crime branch’s Kandivli unit, the charges had grown to be embarrassing; colleagues and superiors said he had a finger in every pie—collecting extortion amount from businessmen on behalf of gangs, settling land deals and intervening in land-grab cases.

RISING GRAPH
Sharma made his mark when he was posted as an inspector with the Crime Intelligence Unit in Andheri. He shot dead prominent gangsters such as Vinod Matkar, Parvez Siddiqui, Rafiq Dabbawala, Sadik Kalia and three LeT men.

BIO-DATA OF A SHARPSHOOTER

THE FAMILY
Pradeep Sharma comes from a family that hails from Agra, Uttar Pradesh. His father has been the principal of a Hindi-medium school in Dhulia in Maharashtra.

JOINING THE FORCE
Sharma joined the police force as sub-inspector in 1983. The 1983 batch is (in)famous as it has given the Mumbai police force most of its “encounter specialists’’; they include Praful Bhosale, Shivaji Kolekar, Vinayak Savde, Vijay Salaskar, Ravindra Angre, the late Raju Pillai, Ashok Borkar and Aslam Momin. IPS officer Arvind Inamdar, reputed to be a no-nonsense official who resigned a year before his retirement, used to teach this batch at the Nashik Police Academy.

CUTTING TEETH
Sharma’s first assignment was at the Mahim police station. He was transferred to the special branch (SB) after a couple of years and then to Juhu. He joined the Ghatkopar police station later where he came in contact with Arun Singh, a teacher at Jhunjhunwala College who allegedly had links with the drug mafia.

BLOOD AND GORE
Arun Singh was shot dead by the Ashwin Naik gang over a dispute in 1991. Arun’s younger brother, O P Singh, replaced him and worked as Sharma’s informer.

LINK-UP WITH CHHOTA RAJAN
Singh’s proximity to the Chhota Rajan gang started increasing around 1992, the period when underworld activities were at their peak. It was then that Sharma allegedly came in contact with the Rajan gang and never looked back.

CHANGING LOYALTIES
O P Singh was killed and this changed the equations in gangland. Sharma shifted his loyalties to Dawood aide Chhota Shakeel; the latter’s brother-in-law, Arif Bhaijan, played a key role.

THE GHOST OF KHWAJA YUNUS
The real trouble started when Sharma’s name cropped up in the investigations into Khwaja Yunus’s custodial death in 2003. The CID filed a report that he should be transferred out of the city as he was hampering the probe. He was shunted to Amravati but reported sick and never went.

THE LAST NAIL
The land-grab case in DN Nagar, in which Sharma was accused of helping builder Alpesh Ajmera grab a plot, which belonged to Heena Kalbaug, was the latest charge. Leader of Opposition in the Assembly, Ramdas Kadam, and senior BJP politician Gopinath Munde alleged in the House that Sharma had amassed a fortune of Rs 5,000 crore.
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THE OTHER BLACK SHEEP

There are several officers in the force, besides Pradeep Sharma, who have been under the scanner for a variety of reasons. Most of them, interestingly, worked together at the Andheri Crime Intelligence Unit before going their own ways

—Vijay V Singh | TNN

Daya Nayak started his career from the Juhu police station and joined forces with Pradeep Sharma in 1997 as part of a special squad under the zonal deputy commissioner of police in the western suburbs. One of the first allegations against Nayak cropped up in a case in which a controversial businessman was kidnapped and had to pay up after the police threatened to kill him in a fake encounter. Nayak moved with Sharma to the Crime Intelligence Unit in Andheri but the two gradually fell out; colleagues said Nayak was growing too big—and started occupying too much space in newspapers and magazines—which they said did not go down well with Sharma. Nayak then emerged out of Sharma’s shadow and was said to have logged 86 encounters before being arrested by the Anti-Corruption Bureau in connection with a case of disproportionate assets. He is still under suspension.

He was considered to be one of Pradeep Sharma’s most trusted lieutenants after having joined him at the Andheri CIU. But he never saw eye-toeye with Nayak and this was one of the reasons that probably led to Mumbai’s infamous cops going their own ways. Vaze was said to be one of the technology-savvy officers in the group and it was he who was said to have floated the story of Khwaja Yunus escaping from custody while being taken to Aurangabad. Vaze was suspended in the case and resigned from service.

Like encounter specialists Sharma and Vijay Salaskar, Bhosale, too, belonged to the 1983 batch. Bhosale was involved in several encounters but escaped major controversies till he was suspended from service because of the Khwaja Yunus case; he was in charge of the Ghatkopar crime branch unit, in whose custody Yunus died. Bhosale is still under suspension.

Momin, too, worked with Pradeep Sharma at the Andheri CIU and was one of the low-profile officers in the unit. He was a senior inspector in Unit III of the crime branch, which handled the match-fixing and fake passport cases. But he was dismissed from service in 2005 for having underworld links; he was said to have direct links with Dgang members and also believed to be the person who convinced Iqbal Kaskar to return to Mumbai.

Most of Angre’s encounters occurred in Thane district; the case that got most eyeballs was the gunning down of Thane’s most notorious gangster, Suresh Manchekar. Angre found himself embroiled in a controversy after builder Ganesh Wagh filed a complaint against him; the builder alleged that Angre and his accomplices threatened him at gunpoint to transfer two of his properties to Angre’s wife. Angre stays suspended.

Sawant was arrested in the m u l t i - c ro re stamp paper scam and also alleged to have let kingpin A K Telgi escape from custody (so that he could go to his Colaba flat for “rest’’). He is under suspension.

Borude, too, was part of the ( i n ) fa m o u s Andheri Crime Intelligence Unit and, like many of his colleagues under the scanner, found himself in a controversy in the Khwaja Yunus case. He was reinstated but transferred out of Mumbai following a court directive. He has reported sick for the last two years.
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