Chennai: Twenty years ago, Sridhar Dhanapal, now a proclaimed offender, was just an arrack seller. His growth from a bootlegger to a don based on Dubai has surpassed the expectations of his rivals too. Police say he can even now make a call from Dubai and arm twist landowners to make them sell their property at a price he dictates.
In the last two decades the 44-year-old don eliminated many of his rivals and made sure police officers turned a blind eye towards his illegal activities besides acquiring more than 125 properties worth over Rs. 150 crore in his name and in the name of his family members. By the time senior police officials noticed him again, he was sitting in the Gulf and running a real estate mafia in Kancheepuram.
Even in the last week of July he managed to arm twist a trader and forced him to sell his property worth Rs.30 crore at a price of Rs.5 crore in Kancheepuram by making a phone call from Dubai.
Many call him the Dawood Ibhrahim of Tamil Nadu, drawing parallels between him and the dreaded terror-funding underworld don. “That is bit too much. Of course, he can execute deals sitting in Dubai through his associates. He is currently most wanted man in TN, that is all,” a senior police officer said. He faces 43 cases including 7 murders in TN.
The Enforcement Directorate attached 124 properties belonging to him and his family members last week in connection with a money laundering case.
Kancheepuram police are taking steps to attach four more properties, worth over Rs.5 crore, belonging to him. Though he comes from Thiruparuthikundram, his given address is in Elappan Nagar in Sevilimedu in Kancheepuram.
A class X dropout in the early ’90s he came in contact with arrack seller Chakravarthy and started collaborating in his business. Chakravarthy was so impressed that he was happy to see his daughter marry Sridhar. From then there was no looking back for Sridhar in the illicit business.
Over a period of time he became an influential smuggler of spirit from Karnataka and starting lording over the illicit arrack business in Vellore and Thiruvannamalai besides Kancheepuram, police disclosed.
It was in 2002 that he was first arrested for a murder attempt. After coming out of jail he eliminated his rivals. At that time certain police officials posted in Kancheepuram had helped him by arresting his rivals to establish his undisputed supremacy in illicit arrack business.
His contact with one Gabriel during one off his stint in jail had helped him to expand his activities in the real estate business through land grabbing and arm twisting owners of properties, said an officer.
Not that he had managed to purchase all the police officials. In the year 2006, a police team followed him in a car and he entered the Chennai airport without required documents and got arrested by paramilitary force deployed there. This was to escape from the police team which was following him.
He went to Dubai in 2013 after he coming out of jail and he has never returned. Kancheepuram police and Enforcement Directorate had tried putting pressure on him by detaining and questioning his daughter, who is a BBA student in England, when she visited her hometown. After all those pressure tactics failed, the law enforcers are now hoping to pin him down by attaching his properties one by one.
