A special court in Delhi on Tuesday awarded 7-year jail term to underworld don Rajendra Sadashiv Nikhalje alias Chhota Rajan and three government officials in a fake passport case.
Besides Chhota Rajan, three other accused sentenced in the case are -- then passport officers Jayashree Dattatray Rahate, Deepak Natvarlal Shah and Lalitha Lakshmanan.
All the accused were yesterday convicted by Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Special Judge Virender Kumar Goyal for offences including forgery of valuable security under the IPC which entails a maximum punishment of life imprisonment.
All the four persons have been convicted of offences under sections 420 (cheating), 471 (using as genuine a forged document), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 467 (forgery of valuable security or will), 419 (cheating by impersonation) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC and section 12 (offences and penalties) of the Passport Act.
The CBI had alleged in its chargesheet that Chhota Rajan got issued a fake passport from Bengaluru in 1998-99 in connivance with Rahate, Shah and Lakshmanan in the name of Mohan Kumar.
This is the first case in which Chhota Rajan has been held guilty.
Deported after being on the run for 27 years, the 55-year old gangster, once a close aide of fugitive terrorist Dawood Ibrahim, was brought to India to face trial in over 70 cases of murder, extortion and drug smuggling in Delhi and Mumbai.
The don, held by the Indonesian police on October 25, 2015, was deported to India on November 6, 2015.
