A couple of months before their arms consignment was seized by the Crime Branch at Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT) in May last year, members of the Chhota Rajan gang had conducted a dry run. Satisfied that the modus operandi was fool-proof, they had adopted it to send arms through grease consignments.

In its report to the MCOCA court, the Crime Branch has submitted that the dry run in February involved import of a consignment containing grease from Bangkok. “Our investigations have revealed that import of the first consignment was a dry run,” said JCP (Crime) Meeran Borwankar.

The first consignment was exported by M/S D I C Trading (Thailand) Co. Ltd in the name of M/S Sudarshan Agro-Bio Tech, which was the importer of the second consignment, containing arms, as well. The order for this consignment was placed by a person identified as Ong, a citizen of Singapore, and the payment was made in cash. The proprietor of M/S Sudarshan Agro-Bio Tech and importer of these consignments, Yashwant Ganpat Yewale, has already been arrested and is now lodged at Arthur Road Jail.

The report further says that after the dry run, accused Madhu Kuttappan Kottiyatil had sent co-accused Mukund Kanhaiyalal Patel to Bangkok at the behest of Chhota Rajan. Patel had travelled to Bangkok on April 6 last year and come back on April 23 on a passport procured from the Thane Passport Office.

During his visit Patel had met Rajan aide Bhagwatsingh Kuwarsingh Thakur alias Bharat Nepali and made arrangements for sending the arms consignment to JNPT. Both Patel and Nepali had packed the 34 revolvers, 3 pistols, 1 silencer and 1,283 cartridges in nine plastic bags and concealed them inside one of the 27 drums containing grease, which arrived at JNPT in the second week of May. The items were seized by the Crime Branch on May 21.

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