By IANS,
Mumbai: The Mumbai police said Wednesday that a search is underway for D.K. Rao, a trusted aide of absconding mafia don Chhota Rajan, who had allegedly ordered the killing of senior journalist Jyotirmoy Dey earlier this month.
“We don’t know his current whereabouts and are looking out for him,” a police officer said.
However, despite his unexplained disappearance, Rao’s involvement in the Dey murder case, if any, is yet to be established, the officer added.
Rao is said to be instrumental in inducting Rohit Thangappan Joseph, alias Satish Kalia, into the Chhota Rajan gang in the mid-1990s. Satish Kalia was the man who fired at Dey June 11 near his residence in Powai area of northeast Mumbai.
Kalia and Rao had met in Arthur Road Central Jail as undertrials and later became close associates.
Besides Kalia, six others were nabbed late Sunday in connection with the Dey murder and have been remanded to police custody.
Rao, who hails from north Karnataka, was acquitted in an extortion case under the stringent Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA), and released from jail in late 2009.
Later, he shot to fame when he threw a celebratory party for several underworld gangsters in which some police officers had also been invited.
Rao, who started life as a security guard in the late 1980s before veering into gangland activities, lived in Dharavi and was involved in over two dozen other cases in which he was either given bail or acquitted.