Chennai: The Kancheepuram police questioned Santhosh, son of the wanted land Mafioso Sridhar Dhanapal, on Sunday after he was picked up from Chennai airport on Saturday.
The proclaimed offender Sridhar Dhanapal, the most wanted man from TN, is being hunted by enforcement directorate and TN police. He used to be operating from Dubai and sources believe that a few months ago he has shifted his base to Malaysia or Sri Lanka.
Police sources said Santhosh is being grilled to know if he has any knowledge of the whereabouts of his father, who is a proclaimed offender in the country. “We wanted to know if Santhosh, who was abroad, has come to Chennai to execute any kind of deals on behalf his father. We are trying to find out if Santhosh visited anybody or contacted any of his father's associates,” sources said.
Sleuths browsed through his WhatsApp and text messages to know more about his schedules and meetings in Chennai. Santhosh reportedly reached Chennai via Colombo from London, where he is doing his MBA on Saturday, when he was detained by police.
The police officer N Shreenatha, who has been following the don’s case vigorously, was transferred after he was promoted and posted as SP, CB-CID last week.
Though his transfer was celebrated by Sridhar Dhanapal’s supporters, it was again the same IPS officer who alerted Kancheepuram police about Santhosh's arrival at the Chennai airport on Saturday.
The ED and police had attached more than 125 properties worth around '150 crore belonging to Sridhar after he was declared a proclaimed offender by a court in Kancheepuram.
The area had been witnessing real estate boom in last many years. Officials believe that the possibility of Sridhar being holed up somewhere in Sri Lanka is high.
Some refer to Sridhar as the “Dawood Ibrahim” of Tamil Nadu. Dawood, the Mumbai underworld don, too had also initially operated from Dubai and later shifted his base to Karachi. Like Dawood, Sridhar too had been executing deals through his associates while sitting in Dubai.
Santosh was let of by the police after 11 hours of drilling at Vishnu Kanchi police station by 9.30 pm on Sunday.
Who is Sridhar Dhanapal?
The ED and TN police are struggling to locate Sridhar Dhanapal, despite attaching almost all properties belonging to him and his family members in the last few months. The man who is facing 43 cases, including 7 murders in TN, started as a simple bootlegger. He grew to a don who can pull strings sitting abroad. He can even now make a call from abroad and make landowners sell their property at a price he dictates. He went to Dubai in 2013 after he came out of jail in a case and never returned. The Kancheepuram police and Enforcement Directorate had tried putting pressure on him by detaining and questioning his daughter, a student in England, when she visited her hometown, besides questioning his wife and brother.
