Most wanted underworld Don Ravi Pujari arrested in South Africa, likely to be deported

Ravi Pujari, a wanted gangster, was detained in South Africa and brought to India by a team of officials including senior Karnataka IPS officers, a top police officer said on Sunday.

Underworld don Ravi Pujari was put on a South African flight to India, where he was recently arrested. Has withdrew from underworld don Chhota Rajan, had jumped bail in Senegal last year and fled to South Africa, where he was involved in large-scale drug trafficking and extorsion. Pujari will fly to Bengaluru and is being ferried to India via Paris by the Karnataka Police on an Air France flight.

Indian Intelligence sources said Pujari, who resided in a remote village in South Africa under the garb of Anthony Fernandes, a Burkina Faso passport holder, was nabbed in.

The investigation would be joined by the National Investigation Agency, Central Investigation Bureau, and Research and Analysis Section, the sources said.

On a tip-off from Indian external intelligence agency, Pujari, 52, is wanted in more than 200 cases of heinous crimes, including murder and extortion; Mumbai Police sources said Pujari's arrest has not yet been officially confirmed but the Ministry of External Affairs is in touch with its South African mission. And the gangster first hit headlines in early 2000 when he started extorting massive sums of prominent Bollywood stars and builders. He was involved in an attempt to assassinate case and an attempt to assassinate a famous Mumbai lawyer. Pujari's wife Padma and three children also had fled India and some of them hold Burkina Faso passports.

Ravi Pujari, a movie junkie inspired by the appearance of Amitabh Bachchan as Anthony Gonsalves used the name Anthony Fernandes in' Amar Akbar Anthony ' This passport was released on 10th July 2013 and is valid until 8th July 2023. The passport revealed his occupation as a commercial agent, which means he is known as a businessman operating a Namaste India restaurant chain in Burkina Faso, Senegal And Pujari's Senegal lawyers had argued in court that he is Anthony Fernandes, a businessman from Burkina Faso as mentioned in his passport and not a fugitive as the Indian government claims.