Having been on the run for the last 27 years, of which he spent a good 13 years in Australia, underworld don Chhota Rajan’s taste buds have undergone a complete change.
The arrested gangster has been demanding boiled eggs with spinach, cornflakes with milk, cheese sandwiches, burgers and toast with vegemite along with cold coffee or juice.
Dishes like dal, roti and sabzi are offered to accused in police custody normally but the agency does consider gastronomical preferences of some high-profile accused in order to keep them in good humour and extract the required information for advancing investigation into the cases.
Rajan has told the interrogators that after leaving India during the late nineties he acquired western food habits. The lock up where Rajan is lodged at the ground floor of the 11-storey state-of-the-art agency headquarters building is centrally air-conditioned.
The 5 feet 2 inches tall and uneducated gangster who does not even know how to operate an e-mail account is completely out of sync with the era that boasts of connectivity on the move, but still controls an extensive network especially in South East Asia of regular businesses apart from illicit activities like fake currency, extortion and organised crime.
Street-smart Rajan is, however, fluent in the knowledge of currencies used in different countries and knows how to quickly count cash. The don was in possession of foreign currency equivalent to Rs10 lakh in cash when he was arrested by the Indonesian police at Bali International Airport on October 25.
The 55-year-old don, whose real name is Rajendra Sadashiv Nikhalje, has 70 cases of murder, extortion and drug smuggling lodged in Mumbai and six in Delhi. In his youth, Rajan had reportedly started out as a movie ticket tout and also ventured into petty theft before indulging in bootlegging.
But after increasing his profile in the underworld and fleeing the country nearly three decades back to evade prosecution, he spent most of these years in Australia, Bangkok, Indonesia and some of the Western countries. Apart from the CBI, the Intelligence Bureau and external spy agency Research and Analysis Wing too are questioning him at the agency headquarters.
Officials said Rajan at times displays spells of mood swings but is otherwise quite talkative. He is learnt to have told the investigators that he is extremely scared of the Dawood Ibrahim gang that might try to eliminate him.
The agency has put four constables to discreetly keep a watch on the don’s activities inside the lock up and also give him company and be friendly with him. “The idea is that he does not feel lonely or depressed,” an official said.
To secure one of the most wanted criminals, the CBI has turned its headquarters into a virtual fortress with close to 200 Delhi Police personnel guarding the stretch of road (now barricaded) in front of the building, a Quick Reaction Team of CISF deployed on the campus and regular paramilitary personnel who man the reception at gate besides the entry and exit points and the headquarters periphery.