Cops get don who almost got away

The Mumbai police today caught up one of their oldest and most ruthless adversaries. Sadanand Natu Shetty alias Sadhu Shetty, one of underwo...

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The Mumbai police today caught up one of their oldest and most ruthless adversaries. Sadanand Natu Shetty alias Sadhu Shetty, one of underworld boss Chhota Rajan’s most notorious hitmen in the ’80s, was killed in a police encounter in northern Mumbai this afternoon.

Shetty, who was involved in several murder and extortion cases, was gunned down along with an associate, identified as Nagaraj Mudaliar (35). The two were reportedly planning a hit job on a city-based hotelier when they were intercepted by a team led by Inspector Vijay Salaskar at around 4.10 p.m. They were declared dead before being admitted to hospital.

One of the most colourful characters thrown up by Mumbai’s badlands, Shetty started small, as a bootlegger in Chembur. This migrant from Karnataka soon hit the big league, settling scores with rival gang members.

By the early ’90s, as Mumbai’s underworld began to change character, Shetty too tried to alter his image and morph into an ‘activist’ of sorts. He returned to his native Paniyur village and formed the Tulu Sena, to lobby for the cause of Tulu-speaking people. But the ghosts from his past never stopped gunning for him: in 1998, Chhota Shakeel’s hitmen, led by Shaikh Mastan and Rashid Malbari, tried to break into his house in Mangalore. They failed, but two of Shetty’s associates were later shot dead at Penambur beach. His past caught up with him in the end near a BEST power station on the Trombay-Panvel Highway, not too far from the place where he first embraced the world of crime.