Chhota Rajan set to return, but does he have enough to help India nail Dawood?

By Subhajit Sengupta

Twenty-seven years after fleeing the Indian shores, Chhota Rajan would be home soon. Within another 30-odd hours we can expect the Indian delegation to land in Delhi, Rajendra Sadashiv Nikhalje in hand. Sources indicate the composite team of CBI, Delhi Police and Mumbai Police have almost finalised the negotiations.

The CBI-led team will first bring Rajan to Delhi and going by what he has told reporters, this is something he wants as well. Rajan told the Indian media in Bali that he fears that there are police officials in Mumbai who are on the payrolls of Dawood and they could try to harm him.

But he clearly is also trying to set the agenda for his homecoming, declaring even without a question being asked on it, that his fight against terrorism will continue. Back in the 90s, it was the Bombay serial blasts which brought curtains on the long camradarie between Dawood and his once closest aide Chhota Rajan. And since then it is the plank which has been used by him to endear himself to the Indian security agencies.

But even as he comes back, the question which looms large is what is Rajan’s utility for the Indian establishment? Rajan, or ‘Nana’, as he is called in the underworld circuit, has a lot to gain, assured medical treatment being just one of them. Security from D-Company is yet another. But senior officers in the security establishment are divided on the dividends that they can gain from him. While some argue his hold over the underworld has only decreased in the last decade, which he mostly spent hiding from Dawood, others maintain no one knows the D Company better than him.

And that’s why the Indian agencies are not taking any chances. It appears he will be interrogated first in Delhi, by CBI and Delhi police before he is sent to Mumbai. Not only Delhi is geographically suitable location for the intelligence agencies, there is also an alleged trust deficit with the Mumbai police. An operation against Dawood, using Rajan’s henchmen was messed up allegedly because the Mumbai police on a tip-off of the former, raided a former intelligence chief who was then with the henchmen sent to eliminate Dawood at a party in Dubai.

The former intelligence chief, who is a very senior person in the scheme of things in Delhi today, thus would surely want Rajan to be close enough, at least initially. But does Rajan have anything on the table, apart from his vast repertoire of information against Dawood? This is a question which the agencies are extremely tight lipped about. But if he has, then it would surely be part of India’s strategy against the country’s most wanted terrorist. After all, not for nothing, it seems, Pakistan has increased the security of their best India asset: Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar.