1. Life and career
    Bhateja, Anna, and Jadhav murders  Rajwani murder 

2. Family

3. References

Pappu Kalani (born 1951) is an Indian criminal-politician from Ulhasnagar. After emerging as the leader of an organized crime

syndicate in the 1980s,^[1] he won elections for the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly in

1986 with the Indian National Congress party,. He won 1990 elections as Indian National Congress, 1995, 1999 elections as Independent^[2] and has been elected continuously from this seat since then, including two elections in the period 1992–2001 when he was in jail on murder charges. His formal name is Suresh Budharmal Kalani and Pappu may be a nickname, though he prefers it as part of the formal name, writing Suresh (Pappu) Budharmal Kalani in his election papers.^[3]

He is currently on bail in 19 cases including eight of murder^[4] and was most recently elected

the MLA for Ulhasnagar from

the Republican Party of India (Athavale) in the Maharashtra state assembly elections, 2004.

Pappu Kalani was served a life sentence on December 3, 2013 in a 23-yr-old murder case of Ghanashyam Bhatija. Ghanashyam Bhatija was murdered on February 27, 1990 near the Pinto Resorts in Ulhasnagar of Thane district. His brother Inder Bhatija, who had seen the murder, was also shot dead on April 27, 1999 despite having police protection.^[5]

Life and career

Born into a wealthy family Pappu Kalani's uncle

Dunichand Kalani was the president of the local unit of Indian National Congress. The family ran a liquor business and owned a number of

distilleries and hotels.^[6] In the 1970s, Ulhasnagar was a booming lawless town settled by

entrepreneurial refugees who had emigrated from Sindh, Pakistan after

the Partition of India in 1947. Sharp business

practices (Ulhasnagar was known for its "duplicate"s or forged goods)

combined with illegal construction and unauthorised industrial units

made for an atmosphere where "protection" emerged as a profitable business.^[1]

A number of gangs were soon working under the patronage of political

parties. Pappu Kalani's uncle Keemat Kalani, also affiliated with the

Congress party, ran the gang headed by Chiman Tejwani,^[1] while the opposing parties,

under politician Gop Behrani, employed the gang of Govind Vachani and Gopal Rajwani. It is reported that both gangs were connected to the

In 1983, Gopal Rajwani was for a while aligned with Pappu Kalani, and they executed the brutal knife murder of the

editor A V Narayan of Blitz magazine.^[7][8] Rajwani was

arrested for this, but he was eventually acquitted due to lack of witnesses

and shoddy prosecution. Nothing came out of this dastardly murder however as the Indian press

never stood up against this criminal.

In 1986, Pappu Kalani was elected president of the Ulhasnagar Municipal Council (UMC),

and the same year, he was chosen by the Indian National Congress party as

its candidate for the state legislature from

Ulhasnagar, and easily won the

seat.^[1]

Meanwhile Gopal Rajwani and Pappu had fallen out

over the division of extortion money.

In April 1985, Rajwani was arrested in an extortion case, apparently at

Kalani's

bidding. As Rajwani

was being escorted to the police station in a rickshaw, Kalani

arranged for his men to attack him with bombs and guns.^[8] Rajwani survived the

attack and eventually relocated to Dubai, with the help of Haji Mastan, a

notorious smuggler and senior don of that time.

In April 1989, Pappu's uncle Dudhichand Kalani was murdered, allegedly by the

Govind Vachani / Gopal Rajwani gang,^[9] at the

instance of Gop Behrani.^[7] This led to reprisal killings – as many as 22 murders in five

months. It was said during this period that

"there would be a killing in Ulhasnagar every Tuesday."^[1]

It was during this period that Pappu Kalani emerged as the leader of his own

organized crime gang.

Bhateja, Anna, and Jadhav murders

In February and April 1990, nephews of Gop Behrani, Ghanashyam and Inder Bhateja were

shot dead, despite having been given state police protection.^[10] Also shot dead in 1990 were gangster Anna,

and rickshaw union leader and bodyguard of Rajwani, Maruti Jadhav,^[6] both of whom were

affiliated with the Gopal Rajwani gang. Jadhav in his dying declaration, as well as another person who was injured in the revolver attack, identified Pappu Kalani personally, and he would later be refused bail in

this murder case.^[11]

In 1990, when Pappu Kalani was formally named in some of these murders,^[12] he was expelled from the Congress party.

In 1992, when the clean-imaged Sudhakarrao Naik took over as Chief

Minister from Sharad Pawar,

he launched a drive against criminal-politicians. Media pressure increased tremendously after the September 1992 shootout where Dawood Ibrahim's gang killed Shailesh Haldankar of the Arun Gawli gang as well as several on-duty policemen at Mumbai's JJ Hospital.^[6] Thereafter,

Pappu Kalani were arrested in November 1992, along with some others gangsters. Pappu was charged with

the gang murders from 1990 and with the JJ Hospital shootout-ably executed by D-Company's Shyam Kishore Garikapatti alias "Black Scorpion"; a total of 19 cases were filed against him.^[6]

He was jailed under

the repressive Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act, which

permitted imprisonment for "terrorists" even

without trial. Several appeals against his incarceration failed – the court

found him sufficiently implicated in the Maruti Jadhav murder to label him as

a level "A" terrorist, and bail was repeatedly denied.^[9][11] However, TADA laws were found inappropriate in some other charges –

particularly for both the Bhateja murders,^[10] and also

in the JJ Hospital shootout case, which were transferred to a sessions court.^[13] However, none of these cases progressed to trial.

Altogether, he spent nine years in jail under TADA before being eventually released on

bail in 2002.

At one point, Sudhakarrao made a statement that the state leader of Indian National Congress party and erstwhile Chief Minister Sharad Pawar, had asked him to

"go easy on Pappu Kalani".^[12]

At another time,

Chief Minister Manohar Joshi of Shiv Sena announced his

intention to prosecute criminal-politicians,^[14] but political realities ensured that nothing much was done.

Under Indian law, someone who has not been sentenced to more

than two years for a crime cannot be considered guilty of a major crime and

is free to

fight elections. Thus, despite being in jail, Kalani kept fighting

and winning the assembly seat from Ulhasnagar, partly because of the

family's muscle, but also because in his first term, Kalani had worked

to improve the roads and the water supply.^[4]

In 1999, when his mentor Sharad Pawar formed the National Congress Party, Pappu

also joined it. However, mounting public pressure proved disruptive for the

nascent party and he was forced to resign. At this time, he handed over the Municipal

corporation to his wife Jyoti Kalani, who would also soon be arrested on

charges

of forgery, non-payment of revenue and illegal liquor manufacturing.^[1]

Rajwani murder

Meanwhile, in January 2000, arch rival Gopal Rajwani was shot dead in a hail

of bullets as he was coming out of a car at the magistrate's court to attend

a case.^[8] It was widely believed that Pappu Kalani, at the time still in jail,

may have masterminded it.^[8]

Immediately after his release from jail in 2001, several cases arose where he

allegedly tried to intimidate one Bhoir family, part of whose land had been illegally encroached upon to build the Seema Holiday Home (since demolished) owned by the Kalanis, and also the shopowner Ramesh Rohra.^[15]

In 2004, Pappu Kalani again won the assembly elections, as a candidate of the

Republican Party of India (Athavale).^[4] His wife however,

continues to be with the National Congress Party.

In 2005, the Bombay High Court ordered the demolition of 855 illegal

structures in Ulhasnagar, Pappu Kalani, a large part of whose extortion money depended on

permitting illegal constructions, passed a law permitting most of them to be

legalized.^[16] However, many structures did not even pay the legalization fees, and

large scale demolitions were launched in Ulhasnagar for most of 2006.

In the municipal elections of 2007, despite very little electioneering by

opposing groups, Pappu Kalani's group mustered only 15 seats (out of 76),

and it is thought that the influence of musclepower may have waned

considerably in Ulhasnagar.^[17]

Family

Pappu Kalani's wife Jyoti Kalani emerged on her own during the years when he

was out of power or in prison, becoming the president (mayor) of the powerful Ulhasnagar

Municipal Council. In recent years, she too faced several charges of intimidation and forgery,^[18] and lost the 2007 municipal elections.^[17] His son

Omi Kalani has been named in several extortion and assault cases in 2005,^[19] and he also has a daughter Seema.

In 2004, his brother Narayan Kalani was arrested for three murders dating back to the

internecine gang warfare of 1990.^[20]

References

• Calgary Dollar
• Calgary East
• Calgary-East
• Calgary-Egmont
• Calgary-Elbow
• Calgary (electoral district)
• Calgary-Fish Creek
• Calgary-Foothills
• Calgary-Forest Lawn
• Calgary-Fort
• Calgary Girls School
• Calgary Girls' School
• Calgary Girl's School
• Calgary Girls' School Society
• Calgary-Hays
• Calgary Herald
• Calgary highlanders
• Calgary Hitmen
• Calgary International Airport
• Calgary International Film Festival
• Calgary-Lougheed
• Calgary-Mackay
• Calgary MacKay
• Calgary-McCall
• Calgary-McKnight