Mumbai, November 17: The Crime Branch on Sunday arrested Mirza Arif Beg (40), a Chhota Shakeel aide from a street in Grant Road.
Beg is wanted in at least five murders and several extortion cases, including that of Balu Dokre, a key member of the Chhota Rajan gang.
Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Rakesh Maria said Beg, the right hand man of Chhota Shakeel, was arrested after he was deported from Colombo in Sri Lanka for overstaying in the country.
“We kept an eye on his movements from the time he landed in the city from Colombo, and after confirming his identity, we arrested him,” said Maria.
The police officials involved with the investigation of the case said Beg was responsible for several murder and extortion cases, many of which took place in 1998. The prominent among those were the murders of Customs Department official Farooq Batata and president of Akhil Bhartiya Sena, Bharat Mhatre.
The officials said Beg was the man who was sent by Shakeel to Malaysia in 2005 for murdering Balu Dokre, an alleged henchman of the Chhota Rajan gang. Dokre, who had over 43 cases of killings and extortion against his name, reportedly on the instructions of Chhota Rajan, made an unsuccessful attempt to kill underworld don Dawood Ibrahim.
Beg, a resident of south Mumbai, fled to Bangkok in 2004 on a bogus passport made from Lucknow on the name of Nasir, the officials added.
He moved to China in 2005 and stayed there for three years before being forced to leave due to the enhanced visa restrictions in view of the Olympics.
He then moved to Hong Kong for a while before changing his location to Jakarta and finally to Colombo.
Beg’s first wife, Shameem, was also arrested in 2002 in an extortion case, the officials added.
–Agencies–