Players with guns ready in the city’s killing fields

North-west additional commissioner Satyapal Singh told Express Newsline, “The loss of Nandu Fighter might incite Gawli to hit back” for it was his first setback after his release from Amravati Jail on May 7.Sources in the underworld say Shakeel ordered Fighter killed to draw Gawli into a full-scale gang war. And the way things are, says joint commissioner of police (Crime) Ranjit Singh Sharma, "The battle for supremacy is between Chhota Shakeel and Arun Gawli, though Gawli is emerging as the number one."Besides there are other underworld players such as Dubai-based Dawood Ibrahim and Malaysia-based Chhota Rajan and their factions whose fierce battles and encounters with the police keep their hitmen constantly in the public eye.

Last month was busy, starting with Sadanand Shetty, brother of Sudhakar Shetty, who was shot dead outside his residence on May 6. He was close to the Sharad `Anna’ Shetty faction of Dawood. Fighter of the Gawli gang and Prakash Salvi, a Guru Satam-aide belonging to the Chhota Rajan gang were killed in broad daylight last week.

Wedged between the two killings was a daylight police encounter with three Kumar Pillai gangsters. Pillai, who had taken over from the late Amar Naik, has allegedly crossed over to Rajan’s gang. This has left the police with more questions than answers.

Even more intriguing are the affiliations of Sada Pawle, who frequently gives signs of having struck out on his own.

But he is to Gawli what Rajan was to his erstwhile boss, Dawood Ibrahim. In fact, Gawli had actually got Pawle and his wife thrown out from the peons’ chawl. But when his coffers and his clout began eroding, he recalled his top lieutenant. Since, unlike Dawood, Gawli did not have anybody like Shakeel to replace Pawle, he had to patch up with him.

To the police, Pawle is a slippery customer. And so are his men. For instance, there is the main shooter of builder and owner of Raghuvanshi Mills Vallabh Thakkar. He was said to be called `Shiva’. Sources now claim that there exists no man by that name in the entire Gawli-Pawle gang. Instead, it was Parshuram Jaitapkar alias Babu Tembya who was introduced to his associates by Pawle as Shiva.

Pawle also moves around with his lethal coterie of killers including Vijay Tandel, Sudhir Surve, Babu Tembya, and Ganesh Bhosale alias Vakil who have managed to outfox the police on a number of occasions.

For instance, last week, when a crime branch team burst into the marriage ceremony of Tandel’s brother in Kasu village of Pen Taluka in Raigad district, he had already given them the slip.

What the police team found was one Premier 118 NE car registered in the name of Tandel’s wife Raveena. Incidentally, this was the same car in which Gawli had travelled back to Mumbai after his release from Amravati Jail.