A special court in Mumbai on Thursday acquitted gangster Chhota Rajan and one Jagannath Jaiswal for the murder of 1993 blasts case accused and film producer Hanif Kadawala. Rajan is already serving life imprisonment for the murder of journalist Jyotirmoy Dey.
The CBI, in its chargesheet filed in June 2019, had claimed that the murder was carried out by Rajan through his men, based on evidence including his media interviews, where he is alleged to have said he would avenge the victims of the blast to “gain public sympathy”.
Kadawala was booked for helping actor Sanjay Dutt in hiding a weapon delivered to him. Kadawala was killed on February 7, 2001. Rajan and Jaiswal faced a separate trial which began last year after the earlier accused booked in the conspiracy were acquitted.
In March last year, Kadawala’s son had moved an intervention application seeking to add a close relative of Kadawala as an accused in the case, claiming there is sufficient evidence to show that the murder was carried out at his behest due to a property dispute.
The court had, however, rejected the plea stating that there was no such claim made for 16 years since the murder and it was difficult to gather what had prompted the family to claim so now.
