A bar owner in Bengaluru, Manish Shetty, was shot dead by unidentified assailants outside the establishment on Rest House Road in Bengaluru’s Central Business District. The incident reportedly took place around 9 pm on Thursday and Manish, who is the owner of Duet Bar in Bengaluru, was declared dead at a private hospital just minutes after he was shot.
Police said that the assailants allegedly stabbed Manish Shetty before shooting him with a double-barreled gun and then speeding away. According to the police, Manish was standing outside Duet Bar on Thursday night when he was allegedly hacked up with machetes and then later shot at. Police said that Manish Shetty was hacked on his head four times. The police suspect that Manish, who was associated with gangster Ravi Pujari, may have been targeted by his rivals.
According to the Cubbon Park police, two men on a bike rode by and one of them shot at Manish at point-blank range once. “Only one bullet was fired and he was also hacked up with machetes on his head. The head injuries seemed to have been fatal,” an investigating officer told TNM.
Manish was immediately rushed to Mallya Hospital after he was shot. He was declared brought dead, the police said.
Manish hailed from Koppa in Chikkamagaluru and has several cases registered against him in Dakshina Kannada district as well as in Mumbai, including an attempt to murder case, police sources told TNM. He also was registered as a rowdy sheeter in Mangaluru, they added. He is known to be close to underworld don Ravi Pujari, who was nabbed by the Bengaluru police earlier in February and an investigation against him is currently underway, the source confirmed.
Police said that Manish Shetty had been in and out of prison several times before this, and was also allegedly the mastermind of several jewel heists in Bengaluru and Hyderabad. The police said that Manish Shetty was the mastermind of the jewellery heist at Chemmanur Jewellers in Bengaluru in 2006.
Manish Shetty hatched the plot to steal the jewels when he was lodged in the Nashik prison in connection with another jewel heist case. In early 2000s, after being accused of looting jewels at Tata Pearls in Hyderabad, where jewellery worth Rs 10 crore was stolen. He moved to Belagavi and set up a tea stall outside a police station. However, a team of Hyderabad and Mumbai police officials nabbed him and he spent several years at the Nashik prison. He allegedly hatched a plot to conduct the heist in Bengaluru while he was in Nashik jail. In 2015, Manish Shetty was allegedly involved in a bank robbery in Belagavi at the Chennammanagar branch of State Bank of India, where Rs 8,00,000 was allegedly stolen by armed assailants.