From Jogeshwari chawls to five-star suites

On the eve of the World Cup, the underworld has lost its main fixer of cricket matches. Sharad Rajanna Shetty was D-Company’s liaison w...

On the eve of the World Cup, the underworld has lost its main fixer of cricket matches. Sharad Rajanna Shetty was D-Company’s liaison with international cricketers, according to investigators of the match-fixing scandal that broke in 2000.

Shetty was known to be close to some cricketers, investigators said, including a former Indian cricket captain. The cricketer, whose name the police have withheld, has allegedly been enjoying Shetty’s hospitality during international matches at Sharjah in the past few years.

Some landmark hits
1995: Chhota Rajan sends a two-man hit squad to Dubai to kill Dawood and associates like Chhota Shakeel and Sunil Sawant, alias Sautya. After a wait of many weeks, they squad shoots Sautya and three others in August outside a hotel. The assasins are arrested an sentenced to death.
1997: Sautya best friend, Sharad Shetty strikes back by killing Kandivali hotelier Ramnath Payarde in Borivali.
1998: Rajan retaliates by gunning down three Dawood men, Shankar Shetty, Shriram Shetty and Pakya.
2001: Dawood’s men — lead by Chhota Shakeel working with Sharad Shetty — launch a murderous attack on Chhota Rajan in a Bangkok hospital on September 15. Rajan escapes, organises killing of three Sharad Shetty aides in Panvel, Mumbai two months later.
2002: Sharad Shetty provides vital tip-off leading to the killing of key Rajan lieutenant Sadhu Shetty.
2003: Sharad Shetty slain in an Indian club in Dubai while playing snooker.

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According to intelligence reports, some international cricketers also are partners in his hotel project in Dubai.

While Chhota Shakeel replaced Chhota Rajan in running extortion rackets around 1993, Shetty specialised in cricket match-fixing and other betting rackets.

Shetty has also played a major role in the international bullion market. To corner the lion’s share of the market, the partnership resulted in the elimination of four Bhatti brothers in Pakistan.

Shetty, like Dawood’s other close associates Chhota Shakeel, Sunil Sawant and Anil Parab fled to Dubai to join their gangleader around 1986. Earlier in India, Dawood exploited Shetty’s proximity to hoteliers in Mumbai and many are still considered to be his sympathisers. They called him Anna.

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Some even contribute to his coffers for protection, according to police sources. Many of Shetty’s contract killings revolved around hotel rivalries. Sharad Shetty along with Jayanta Shetty and Arvind Dolakia hired Vijay Kanjari to kill former don Babu Reshim in a police lockup at Central Mumbai. The killing was a fallout of rivalry over hotel business in 1986.

As per police records, Shetty is named in at least three other murders. Prominent among them was that of hotelier Ramnath Payarde at Kandivali in 1997.

Some of his other targets, according to the police, are one Laxman and jeweller Prabhakar Achraya in the western suburbs.

Shetty grew up in Jogeshwari before he began running rackets around colleges in Andheri (West) and Jogeshwari. He soon moved to Central Mumbai to join hands with Dawood Ibrahim.

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Former comrades, and now sworn rivals, underworld dons Dawood Ibrahim and Chhota Rajan, have been waging a bloody, transcontinental war over a decade. They survive, but many able lieutenants have been slain. Sharad Shetty was just the latest.