Fingerprints of Chhota Rajan collected in 1980 proved to be the clinching evidence for his deportation from Indonesia to India. The fingerprints were found in three parts from Tilak Nagar police station storeroom.
Police officials revealed that after they left for Bali, despite being armed with all the necessary documents, the Mumbai police had one missing link — the lack of original records of Rajan’s fingerprints. The next most challenging task for the team was to establish Rajan’s identity beyond doubt to the police officials in Bali. On November 1, a team of police officials reached Bali to deport Rajan to India.
Sources said, “In order to successfully get Rajan’s custody in India, various wings of the police department worked to collect documents, which bore his name, age and other crucial details. We knew that the most obvious and biggest hurdle is to correctly establish the identity of Rajan infront of the Bali officials and Indonesian government. We procured a duplicate copy of his school-leaving certificate, gained a photocopy of his voter registration card and a photocopy of his fingerprint records,” said a senior officer.
He further added, “Rajan studied till seventh standard in one of the schools in Tilak Nagar. The school certificate also detailed his full name i.e. Rajan Sadashiv Nikalje and his date of birth. The voter’s registration card listed the address where Rajan stayed in Mumbai. “We had to struggle a lot to obtain the school certificate as it was very old and school authority took a lot of time to retrieve it because of which we received the certificate after our team reached the airport. It was handed over to the team before they boarded the flight to Delhi,” the officer said.
However, the Indian police officials got stuck again when the photocopy of Rajan’s fingerprint did not match with his fingerprints and the Bali police officials refused to hand over his custody. “We were stuck as conducting a DNA test match was too lengthy a process. But our crime branch officials gave Tilak Nagar police the task to find the fingerprint record. Officials from that station had arrested Rajan in 1980 in a murder case. The officials worked tirelessly for a week scrutinising all documents at the station and finally found the original fingerprints of Rajan but the document was in three pieces,” said the official. “But Tilak nagar police managed to join the different parts and sent a scanned copy to the team present in Indonesia. Only after the original print was matched, did the Bali police give Rajan’s custody to our police team,” added the official.
