Bengaluru: Notorious underworld don Bannanje Raja from Karnataka, who was arrested in February this year in Casablanca in Morocco in an alleged fake passport case, will be brought to the city by this weekend.
Sources said that a team headed by Additional Commissioner (Law & Order) Pratap Reddy has reportedly left for Rabat to bring back Bannanje. The date of their arrival is being kept confidential for security reasons, said an official source.
Last week the Director General & Inspector General Om Prakash had announced Bannanje’s extradition from Morocco after a laborious and painstaking work by the Karnataka police, Research & Analysis Wing, Ministry of External Affairs backed by the Interpol, Moroccan and Dubai police. This is the first time in the history of Karnataka police that a criminal is being extradited to the state.
The CBI had earlier notified the Interpol to issue a Red Corner Notice (RCN) against Bannanje, who has around 48 criminal cases of murder, attempt to murder, kidnap and extortion cases against him in the state, including the December 2013 supari killing of BJP leader and mining businessman R.N. Nayak in Ankola in broad daylight.
Bannanje was allegedly hiding in Morocco under the moniker Kumar Hemanth Hegde and was given away by a Dubai-based hotelier, Praveen Shetty, who filed a police complaint after he refused to give into his Raja’s extortion calls. Shetty is originally from Udupi. Raja, who was tracking Shetty, called him in Dubai and he recorded the don’s call.
In a cross-country investigation, Dubai and Moroccan police assisted by India’s R&AW and Internal Security Division of Karnataka learnt that Hegde was one of India’s most wanted underworld dons.
His wife, who was also in Dubai on a fake passport under the name Sona Hegde, was under the radar.
Her travel records confirmed that she was with Raja in Casablanca on New Year’s Eve and this further confirmed Raja’s location.
