Solving Crime
The investigation of the R N Nayak murder has been one of the most meticulous ones carried out by the Karnataka Police – leading to the conviction of gangster Bannanje Raja and six members of his B R Company to a life term in prison. On December 21, 2013, a 57-year-old businessman and popular local leader in the Karwar region of Karnataka was shot dead in broad daylight outside his office while he was going home for lunch. The investigation of the R N Nayak murder has been one of the most meticulous ones carried out by the Karnataka Police, leading to the conviction of gangster Bannanje Raja and six members of his B R Company to a life term in prison on April 4, 2022, for murder and organised criminal activities. The case involved the gathering of ballistic evidence, guns seized from two shooters and their comparison with the bullets that killed Nayak, and hand swabs of a B R Club gang member who was shotdead at the crime scene by the businessman’s bodyguard. The main shooter, Akash Kumar Upadhyay, was shot by Nayak’’�s headguard Ramesh Gowda while the second shooter, Satish Patel, was nabbed by locals after he tried to escape from the crime. The forensics collected the bullets used for the murder and found in them to prove the latter had used guns. The detection and building of evidence was one of those which would eventually lead to the extradition of gangsters Bannansje Rajasman was one.
gepubliceerd : 2 jaar geleden door Express News Service in General
On December 21, 2013, in one of the most daring underworld shootings in Karnataka, a 57-year-old businessman and popular local leader in the Karwar region, who had been resisting a Rs 3 crore extortion demand by a gangster for three years, was shot dead in broad daylight outside his office while he was going home for lunch.
The investigation of the R N Nayak murder has been one of the most meticulous ones carried out by the Karnataka Police – leading to the conviction of gangster Bannanje Raja and six members of his B R Company to a life term in prison on April 4, 2022, for murder and organised criminal activities.
The case involved the gathering of ballistic evidence – guns seized from two shooters and their comparison with the bullets that killed Nayak, and hand swabs of a B R Company gang member who was shot dead at the crime scene by the businessman’s bodyguard – the tracking of local and international phone calls, CCTV footage, and analysis of voice samples of calls made by gangster Bannanje Raja to TV channels to claim the murder.
The case also involved RAW agents helping the Karnataka Police’s Internal Security Division track Bannanje Raja down to Casablanca in Morocco – after attempts to nab him in Dubai failed – and the process of extradition of Raja which involved translation of the entire evidence built up against him into French to enable the extradition process with Morocco.
Bannanje Raja, now 54, who was based in Dubai in 2013, and his gang had been attempting to extort Rs 3 crore from the businessman, R N Nayak, since 2009. The businessman ignored the threats of the gangster, sought police protection, and filed police complaints against the gangster along with submitting audio recordings of the threats to him.
On December 21, 2013, hired gunmen carried out the killing of the businessman in the Ankola town of the Karwar region of Karnataka. One of the gunmen involved in the shooting, Akash alias Vivek Upadhyay, 27, (accused number 1) was killed by Nayak’s bodyguard in the shootout while a second shooter, Satish Patel, was caught by members of the public while he was trying to flee the crime scene after the shooting.
The police probe found that the murder plot was hatched in a Karnataka prison by Mahesh Achangi, an associate of Bannanje Raja.
Bannanje Raja alias BR alias Rajendra Kumar, a gangster from coastal Karnataka who ran a mafia outfit called the BR Company, was involved in over 40 crimes in Karnataka.
The modus operandi of Bannanje Raja, like many of the gangsters involved in extortion from their foreign bases, was to call up wealthy businessmen after collecting information about their businesses and finances through a network of informants in various parts of Karnataka. The gangster would hold out the threat of murder and seek huge payments.
The murder was financed by Bannanje Raja through a business associate Jagadish Chandra after it was planned by Mahesh Achangi in prison with the recruitment of Akash Kumar Upadhyay, Ambaji Bhandagar, and Ganesh Bhajantri.
Upadhyay, a sharpshooter from UP and an expert in firearms, was handed the task of executing the murder along with the second shooter Satish Patel, also from UP, while the locals – Bhandagar and Bhajantri – provided logistics like transportation and escape vehicles.
The detection and building of evidence
One of the biggest advantages for the police in the investigation of the R N Nayak murder case that would eventually lead to the extradition of gangster Bannanje Raja was the fact that the main shooter, Akash Kumar Upadhyay, was shot dead by Nayak’s bodyguard Ramesh Gowda while the second shooter, Satish Patel, was nabbed by locals after he tried to escape from the crime scene.
From the crime scene, the police found the guns used for the murder. Forensic investigators collected hand swabs of the shooters and found remnants of gunpowder in them to prove that the latter had used guns. The forensics also collected the bullets that were fired in the crime and dispersed around the crime scene – including the car of R N Nayak – and compared them to the firearms seized from the shooters.
The police collected technical evidence in the form of CCTV footage from banks, bakeries, and the crime scene, to indicate the movements of the accused during the plotting of the murder and its eventual execution.
On January 11, 2014, around three weeks after the murder of R N Nayak, the police who had been sifting through CCTV footage of the movement of the gang identified the two others present at the crime scene as Ambaji Bhandagar and Ganesh Bhajantri and nabbed them on a tip-off at Shivamogga.
Ambaji Bhandagar told the police that he had come in touch with Mahesh Achangi, the pointsman of Bannanje Raja, and Akash Upadhyay, the shooter who was killed, while the three of them were lodged in the Mysuru prison. The killing of R N Nayak was plotted in the prison and the process of execution began after he and Upadhyay were released on bail, Ambaji Bhandagar said.
Among the key evidence that the police were able to produce against Bannanje Raja, who was not present at the crime scene, was a series of voice matches from extortion calls made to R N Nayak, and from calls made to the media following the murder.
During the trial, the session court judge said that he was convinced about the involvement of Bannanje Raja – who was based in Dubai –in the killing of Nayak by his henchmen in Karnataka after being provided forensic evidence of voice matches.
“This court is convinced by the voices heard by this court from accused No.9 (Bannanje Raja) also after listening to the records produced before this court. The confession statements of other accused are also relevant,” the trial court observed.
The voice matches and confession statements of several of the accused that they were working at the behest of the gangster proved that Bannanje Raja was the head of the mafia outfit involved in the Nayak murder, the court said.
Among the other key evidence that the Karnataka Police unearthed during the investigation was the money trail involved in the financing of the murder including the supply of the guns used in the murder.
The police probe found that the family of Upadhyay, the shooter involved in the murder, was paid by a financier for the Bannanje Raja gang after the shooter died during the crime.
Bannanje Raja was extradited from Morocco in 2015. After he was identified as the key lynchpin in the Nayak murder, the Central Bureau of Investigation informed Interpol, and a Red Corner Notice was issued against the gangster.
Raja was initially tracked down to Dubai in 2014 but he managed to flee the UAE before the Indian police could reach him. He went into hiding in Morocco under the assumed name of Hemanth Hegde but was soon tracked down with the help of Indian intelligence services.
The Karnataka Police provided extensive documentation to convince a Moroccan court to facilitate the extradition of Bannanje Raja. “The proceedings for the extradition were conducted by the highest court of Morocco. The court agreed to the extradition request on May 6 (2015). A criminal decree was passed by Morocco on June 15,” the Karnataka Police said in 2015.
On receiving information from Morocco, a police team comprising former inspector general of western range Prathap Reddy, who was the senior-most officer in the Karwar region in 2013 when the Nayak murder occurred, K Annamalai, an SP who took over the investigations (who is currently the BJP president in Tamil Nadu), and others went to the Saale International Airport at Morocco and took custody of Raja on August 13, 2015. A phone and SIM card being used by Raja were among the materials handed over to the Indian police.
The trial court pronounced life imprisonment on April 4, 2022, for Satish Patel, 30, Ambaji Bhandagar, 42, Ganesh Bhajantri, 35, K M Ismail, 53, Bannanje Raja, 53, Mahesh Achangi, 40, and Ankit Kumar, 33, for murder under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code. The accused were also sentenced to life imprisonment for organised crime.
The R N Nayak murder case was one of the first in Karnataka wherein the Karnataka Control of Organised Crime Act (KCOCA), 2000, was invoked by the state police.
The KCOCA was introduced in the year 2000 as a strong measure to control organised crime on account of clauses in the law on bail, evidence, and culpability which are beneficial to the police in bringing the accused in organised, violent crimes to book.
Onderwerpen: Crime, Murder, Organized Crime