Chhota Rajan will, however, continue to remain in jail in connection with other criminal cases.
The Bombay high court on Wednesday suspended the life sentence of gangster Chhota Rajan in connection with the murder of hotelier Jaya Shetty in Mumbai in 2001 and granted him bail in the case.
A division bench of Justices Revati Mohite Dere and Prithviraj Chavan directed Chhota Rajan to furnish a bond of ₹1 lakh for the bail. Chhota Rajan will, however, continue to remain in jail in connection with other criminal cases.
In May, a special court convicted Chhota Rajan in the hotelier’s murder case and sentenced him to life imprisonment.
Rajan had filed an appeal in the Bombay high court against the conviction. The gangster sought that the sentence be suspended and he be granted bail in the interim.
Who was Jaya Shetty?
Jaya Shetty, who owned the Golden Crown hotel at Gamdevi in central Mumbai, was shot dead by two alleged members of Chhota Rajan’s gang on the hotel’s first floor on May 4, 2001.
A probe suggested that Jaya Shetty had received extortion calls from Hemant Pujari, a member of the Chhota Rajan gang, and was killed because of his failure to pay the money.
Rajan, already serving a life term for the murder of veteran crime reporter J Dey, is currently lodged at the Tihar jail in Delhi.
Murder of Datta Samant
Last year, a special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court acquitted Chhota Rajan of orchestrating the high-profile murder of renowned Mumbai trade union leader Dr Datta Samant, who was shot dead in 1997.
The court acquitted him on the grounds of lack of cogent evidence. “In this case, no incriminating evidence has come on record against the accused in respect of conspiracy to commit the murder of Dr Datta Samant,” the court said.
Dr Samant was shot dead by four persons on Padmavati Road on January 16, 1997, while he was travelling from Powai to Ghatkopar in his jeep. Although three individuals were convicted for the murder in 2000, Rajan was named among the wanted accused in the case.
He was arrested in 2015 in Indonesia and brought to Mumbai. All the pending cases against him were then transferred to the CBI.
