Daijiworld Media Network - Bengaluru (SHP)
Bengaluru, Feb 26: The additional director general of police, (Law & Order) Amar Kumar Pandey has had quite a tough 20 months since he was first assigned the task of extraditing notorious criminal Ravi Poojary by a former state police chief in July 2018. However, on February 22, Pandey's mission of extraditing the underworld don to India was realised when the latter was placed under judicial custody in Senegal. Pandey and his team brought Poojary to Bengaluru on the midnight of February 23-24 in a closely guarded cross-continent operation.
“Kya ho raha hai, Saheb?” (What is happening, sir), was the first exchange of words between Poojary and Pandey after the dreaded outlaw was handed over to the Karnataka police team headed by Pandey, by their counterparts in Senegal at the international airport in the West African country.
Pandey recalls his investigations which always led to a dead end. “I did not know what he looked like. It was like chasing a ghost. Poojary was on the run for more than two decades and his last photograph available was of 1994. There were some photographs of him on the Internet, including the one in a swimming pool. I sieved through the news reports on Poojary and all that was available on him on the internet and began tracking his extortion calls. But soon I hit a wall. Poojary was using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) to make extortion calls. His phone number was not reflected in his calls. Initial investigation showed that he was making calls using SIMs of different countries. He had not used the same SIM for two calls,” narrated Pandey. In December 2018, the officer got an input that his hunt could end in Burkina Faso but by the time he could act on it, Poojary already disappeared from there.
One of the first things Pandey remembers doing was tracking Poojary's extortion calls. “Tracking Poojary’s call list had revealed certain geography from where he was making the extortion calls. That was the first tangible clue on hand. I was sure that he was overseas and hypothetically, in Africa. I started making efforts through the Ministry of External Affairs and reached out to the Indian embassies, and through them, the local agencies, where I suspected Poojary could be hiding. The second input of him being in Senegal got me the man. Based on our inputs the Senegal police arrested him from a salon in Dakar on January 19, 2019. His identity was previously confirmed by matching his fingerprints in the Bala Zalte murder case in Mumbai in 1994 against which there was a Red Corner Notice issued against Poojary with his fingerprints,” said Pandey.
The don had been in judicial custody in Senegal since his arrest. “The process of extradition took time because Poojary had the right to appeal against it. On February 19 he exhausted all his legal options when the Supreme Court of Senegal rejected his extradition plea. On the midnight of February 18 we had boarded the flight on way to Senegal to get Poojary back,” said the police officer.
At the airport, I told Poojary that we were taking him back to India. Tumhara extradition ho gaya hai. (You have been extradited). He was stressed and looked nervous when he was handed over to us. I asked him if he was alright. He was emotional on the flight,” said Pandey.
Poojary was arrested in Senegal on February 22 by Pandey and his select team comprising Sandeep Patil, joint commissioner (Crime) Bengaluru City Police and Siddappa Mallappa Bottelin and Jayaprakash Chandramohan of the Central Crime Branch (CCB). “His extradition is on a bilateral agreement between India and Senegal since we do not have the extradition treaty with them. One of the caveats of the agreement is that he will not be given capital punishment," added Pandey.
The police officials from the CCB will be re-investigating Poojary’s blood dossier which is concerned with the 2007 Shabnam Developers murder case. It was one of the first cases on Poojary where the crime was allegedly committed by one of his henchmen.