Rajan paid Rs 25 million for his freedom — Lawyer

Thai police had yesterday said that Rajan alias Vijay Kadam used knotted bedsheets to climb down from the window of his hospital room.

“Do you believe that story?” Rajan asked the lawyer.

The lawyer said that Rajan informed him that he would be leaving Thailand tomorrow by sea to somewhere in South East Asia and then to a Middle East country. Sirichai said Rajan told him that “it was the right decision to flee… He had been held unlawfully by Thai police.”

Thai police maintained that Rajan is likely to have fled to Cambodia. “From our investigations, we believe that Rajan has already left Thailand via Aranyapathet (a town on the eastern border) to Cambodia using fake travel documents,” said Police Colonel Visit Nimitkul.

As part of a nationwide investigation into the disappearance, an alert had been put out at Bangkok International Airport but so far there was no sign the fugitive had flown out of the country, Visit said. The Thai branch of Interpol was coordinating with its Indian counterparts over the matter, he added.

Rajan slipped out of police custody on Friday after apparently escaping from his hospital room by shinning down a rope made of knotted bed sheets. Thailand’s acting Metropolitan Police Commander Major General Jongrak Juthanont said on Friday that an investigation had been launched into whether the police guarding Rajan had been bribed to allow him to make an escape. The results of the inquiry are due to be released Monday.

Mumbai Police Chief M N Singh said Rajan’s dramatic escape may trigger off a spate of vendetta attacks. “Our efforts have gone in vain. We did our best. It is now up to the centre to deal with the case,” he told the PTI, lamenting that the attempt to extradite him had gone to waste. “I am sure Rajan will be up to his old game and may settle scores with his rivals. We will have to wait and watch,” he said.

Meanwhile, Union Home Ministry today debunked news-reports suggesting “a link between the Central Government and Rajan’s escape from a Bangkok hospital.” Maintaining that the Government was already in touch with Interpol over the issue, a Home Ministry spokesperson said “these reports seem to be a mischievous attempt on the part of vested interests to misguide the people.”

Rajan was facing a bid to extradite him from Thailand to India, where he is to stand trial on 17 counts of murder and other mob-related charges. He was under provisional arrest in Bangkok at the time of his escape.

Rajan was wounded in September by gunmen who burst into a Bangkok apartment and killed his associate Rohit Verma in what appeared to be a shooting ordered by Rajan’s rival, Dubai-based gangster Dawood Ibrahim. Three Pakistani men were among those arrested for the shooting. Rajan was once Ibrahim’s right-hand man in the Bombay underworld but a series of bomb blasts in the city in 1993 which killed 300 people led to a fallout out with Ibrahim. Rajan, who reached Bangkok earlier this year after fleeing to Dubai in 1988, is believed to control a crime empire that takes in extortion rackets, drug trafficking and film financing.