Mumbai, Oct 23 (IANS): The Bombay High Court on Wednesday granted bail to mafia don Rajendra S. Nikalje, alias Chhota Rajan and suspended his life sentence in the case of the sensational murder of Mumbai hotelier Jaya Shetty in 2001.

On May 30 this year, a Special MCOCA Court had pronounced Rajan and others guilty of the sensational murder and handed down his second sentence of life imprisonment in the past nearly nine years.

He had filed an appeal against the life sentence which is now suspended by a division bench of Justice Revati Mohite-Dere and Justice Prithviraj K. Chavan, till the outcome of the high court plea, and also granted him bail.

However, Rajan is unlikely to be released as he is already convicted and serving a life sentence for the 2011 daylight killing of a crime journalist, Jyotirmoy Dey at Powai, which he is serving in New Delhi’s Tihar Central Jail.

Shetty, the owner of the Golden Crown Hotel in south Mumbai, was shot dead by two gunmen on May 4, 2001, with the hit ordered by Rajan, a bitter rival of the absconder terrorist don Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar, triggering a huge sensation in the hospitality and political circles.

After the long trial, the Special MCOCA Court Special Judge A. M. Patil found Rajan guilty and sentenced him to life in jail, along with other accused Rahul Pansare, Ajay Mohite, and Pramod Dhonde.

Shetty had become a victim in an alleged extortion case and had been provided with police security, which was withdrawn a couple of months before he was targeted and killed. Incidentally, the Shetty murder case was among the dossier of 71 major offences that were handed over by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to the Indonesia government after Rajan was nabbed in the tourist haven of Bali and subsequently deported to India in November 2015.