09 April,2011 06:13 AM IST | | Poornima Swaminathan
The Mumbai Crime Branch may have averted a bloody shootout in the Sessions Court in Kala Ghoda yesterday, by arresting three suspected shooters, alleged aides of gangster Santosh Shetty and Vijay Shetty.
The three were reportedly conducting a recce of the court premises along with another man on Friday, the day when members of their rival Chhota Rajan gang were to be produced in the court at around 3.30 pm.
Recovery
Cops recovered two revolvers from the arrested trio, whereas one managed to flee. The CB sleuths knew that aides of don Chhota Rajan were to make a court appearance post lunchtime.
Acting on a tip-off, a team of plainclothes policemen laid a trap outside court number 47 of the court.
Two of the arrested accused have been identified as Ravi Shetty and Karan Jagtap, who, investigations
revealed is the younger brother of Devendra Jagtap.
Their boss, Santosh Shetty, one of the frontrunners of the notorious Mangalore syndicate, has vouched to eliminate the Chhota Rajan gang to gain unquestioned supremacy of the city's underworld, insiders revealed.
The ganglord from south India wants to entrench himself in this city, after he broke away from former mentor Chhota Rajan around 2001. His claim to fame in the gangland is the alleged slaughter of Bharat Nepali.
Interrogations on
"We are interrogating the accused to find out who they were trailing or targeting, and what their plans were," said a senior Crime Branch officer.
"The Mangalorean gangsters are trying to gain a foothold in the city's western suburbs. They are running BPO-like operations (that is, giving contract assignments to hirelings) to avoid getting caught by Mumbai police," said another senior official.
Underworld insiders say that with the recent spree of underworld killings, the Shettys could soon rein terror in the builder community in western suburbs, by extorting money from their targets and establishing a sinister network.
