The Bombay High Court on Friday granted bail to former four-time Ulhasnagar MlA Suresh Pappu Kalani, in an appeal filed by him challenging the life imprisonment awarded to him by a sessions court in the Inder Bhatija murder case in December last year.
While granting bail, a HC bench headed by Naresh Patil asked Kalani to furnish a surety of Rs 1 lakh and report to Kalyan police once in a fortnight. The bench restrained Kalani from entering his home town of Ulhasnagar. On December 2 last year, a Kalyan court had convicted Kalani and sentenced him to life imprisonment in the Inder Bhatija murder case. The court had also convicted three other accused in the case Bachie Pandey, Baba Gabriel and Harshad Shaikh, all sharp-shooters under Section 302 (murder) of IPC and sentenced them life imprisonment.
Special public prosecutor Vikas Patil opposed Kalani’s bail on the ground that the latter had unleashed terror in Ulhasnagar town and that the convict (Kalani) was allegedly involved in many crimes after he had been given bail by the Supreme Court during the trial in this case.
Patil told the court that the acts of Kalani while out on bail had cleared displayed his disregard for judiciary and acted on his own whims and fancies. Kalani's counsel Niteen Pradhan submitted that there was no direct evidence to show the role of Kalani in Inder Bhatija's murder. “Moreover, two major witnesses, the father and the wife of the deceased, had turned hostile,” the defence lawyer told the HC bench.
Sixty-five-year-old Kalani, who is the husband of the ruling NCP’s Ulhasnagar city unit president Jyoti Kalani, has been an influential politician in the business township for years on end. He had let loose a reign of terror at Ulhasnagar from mid-eighties to early nineties when the business reeled under rampant crimes.
In 1990, when Kalani contested the Ulhasnagar Assembly seat as a Congress candidate, Bhateja and his brother Ghanshyam were working for his rival Sheetaldas Harchandani, a BJP candidate, in the polls. On the polling day (February 27, 1990), when the Bhateja brothers caught Kalani's associates casting bogus votes, they were threatened with dire consequences by the Congress supporters.The same day, upon Kalani's instructions, the accused gunned down Ghanshyam on a road in front of Pinto Park Hotel, while Inder managed to escape.
later on April 27, 1999, Inder was shot dead in his office in the presence of his police guard. Kalani won the election but was later arrested in the murders.While charges have been filed in Ghanshyam's murder case, the trial is yet to begin. Inder and Ghanshyam were both in the construction business. Kalani faces as many as eight TADA cases. There are a total of 76 criminal cases against him of which eight are of murder.
Kalani was granted bail by the Supreme Court, on the condition that he would refrain from any criminal activities. But several new cases were registered against him while he was out on bail. Kalani was first elected to the Maharashtra Assembly from Ulhasnagar in 1990, as a Congress candidate. He later won as an independent for two more terms, but in 2009 was defeated by Kumar Ailiani (BJP) the brother in law of Bhatijas.