Karnataka’s mafia don Rajendra Kumar alias Bannanje Raja, accused of over 50 criminal cases, along with nine others were on Wednesday, March 30, found guilty of murdering BJP leader and mining industrialist RN Nayak. A special court in Belagavi, set up to hear cases under the Karnataka Control of Organised Crime (KCOC) Act, 2000, was hearing the case of RN Nayak’s murder in 2013 in Ankola in Karnataka’s Uttara Kannada district. This was the first case filed under the KCOC Act.
Over 210 witnesses deposed before the court over seven years, including IPS officers like current Tamil Nadu BJP chief K Annamalai, ADGP Pratap Reddy and former Bengaluru Police Commissioner Bhaskar Rao. The police’s 500-page chargesheet, filed in 2013, had named 16 including Bannanje as accused. While 13 were arrested, the Belagavi court on Wednesday found three of them not guilty due to lack of evidence.
According to the police, Bannanje Raja who was from Malpe in Udupi, would allegedly demand hafta or protection money from businessmen, and had demanded about Rs 3 crore for the same from RN Nayak. However, Nayak refused to pay the mafia don, after which he was gunned down in his car and killed in December 2013. Bannanje Raja was named as the prime accused in the case.
The Karnataka police had launched an international manhunt for Bannanje Raja, as he was in exile for 18 years since he was named in several criminal cases in Karnataka and Maharashtra. In 2009, a red corner notice was issued against him by the state police to all countries, through the Union Home Ministry. Finally, in 2015, the police were able to trace him to Casablanca in Morocco, where he was intercepted by Interpol and the Morocco police and brought back to India to face trial. He was brought to Bengaluru by a team headed by Pratap Reddy.