Their ‘normal’ jobs include firing at targets chosen by their boss, Ravi Pujari. But of late, the ‘poorly paid’ members of the Ravi Pujari gang have been resorting to petty crimes like mobile theft and chain-snatching in order to support themselves, said police officials who interrogated the six men recently arrested by a
special team set up to curb the illegal activities of Pujari.
According to the sleuths, the arrested men have been working for Pujari for the past three years. One of them is Ashok Chowdharie, 27, Pujari’s second in command, whom the police suspect to be behind all the recent firing incidents in the western suburbs.
“What astonishes us is that these men, apart from engaging in relatively ‘high profile’ crimes like firing at people, are also involved in petty offences, which is not the case with other underworld gangs,” said a senior police team member.
Police officials said that Chowdharie, who had allegedly fired at a builder in Panvel earlier this year, and was arrested on Friday, was also into mobile thefts, small robberies, chain-snatching, and pick-pocketing. “He was indulging in such petty crimes despite being number two in the Pujari gang,” said Additional Commissioner of police (West region) Amitabh Gupta. The officials reveal that even the other arrested accused were similar cases of ‘top-rung’ gangsters reduced to petty crime.
In contrast, members of larger underworld gangs treat their men with more ‘respect’. For instance, Dawood Ibrahim’s number two, Chhota Shakeel, sits in Karachi and runs his business in Mumbai over phone. His main interest in the city is its burgeoning real estate, which he regularly milks for his extortion racket.
Similarly, the second-in-command of the Chhota Rajan gang, DK Rao, would run the empire for his master from inside a prison cell, said police sources. Rao is currently out on bail.
Both these gangs are better pay masters as well, the officials said, as their targets are often celebrities. The Pujari gang, on the other hand, is known to target lesser known individuals.
Investigators believe that this trend in the Pujari gang could be due to poor pay. “We suspect that they (the gang members) have taken to petty crime because they were being poorly paid by Pujari,” said a crime branch officer. The officials keeping a tab on Pujari’s activities said that his targets don’t pay him much, with some not bothering to pay up at all. “None of Pujari’s recent targets have paid him the ransom amount. As a result he might be facing a financial crunch,” added the officer.
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