Year after extradition, gangster Ravi Pujari reaches Mumbai today

City cops get the custody of former Chhota Rajan aide in over 10 cases, including the 2016 Gajalee restaurant firing

The Mumbai police have finally got hold of gangster Ravi Pujari, who faces 49 cases in the city, nearly a year after the underworld operative was extradited from Senegal. The police team bringing him from Bangalore was expected to reach the city in the early hours of Tuesday.

Sources said the anti-extortion cell of the Crime Branch got the custody of Pujari, a former aide of arrested underworld don Chhota Rajan, in over 10 cases, including the 2016 Gajalee firing.

Pujari is also accused of orchestrating the Deepa bar firing, a fatal attack on a builder in Chembur and targeting a filmmaker and has been under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act or MCOCA. The gangster is expected to be in the custody of city police for the next few months. While initially he will be in a police lockup, he will be sent to jail later, said officers.

The Karnataka police have handed over Pujari to a team comprising senior inspector Ajay Sawant and APIs Sunil Pawar and Raju Surve of Mumbai Crime Branch, said officers.

Joint CP (Crime) Milind Bharambe told mid-day, "We have taken custody of gangster Ravi Pujari in the Gajalee restaurant firing case. Our officers with Pujari will reach Mumbai by Tuesday morning. After that he will be presented in a MCOCA court for remand."

In October 2016, a man opened fire at the counter of Gajalee restaurant and asked the owner to call up Ravi Pujari if he wanted to save his life. The anti-extortion cell arrested seven people and found that it had been done at the behest of Pujari. Indian agencies brought Pujari from Africa a year ago and handed him to the Bangalore police.

Pujari has 97 cases, including murder, extortion and shootout, against him in Karnataka. His extradition had prompted the city cops to move a court there for custody.