Journalist J Dey murder case verdict: Gangster Chhota Rajan, eight others sentenced to life imprisonment

A special CBI court on Wednesday convicted Rajendra Nikalje alias Chhota Rajan and eight others for the murder of senior journalist Jyotirmoy Dey. All have been sentenced to life imprisonment. The court, however, acquitted journalist Jigna Vora and Joseph Paulson of all charges. Rajan and others were convicted  of murder, criminal conspiracy and under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime. Special public prosecutor Pradeep Gharat submitted that the accused should not be shown leniency since the attack on the journalist was an attack on the fourth pillar of democracy. The defence advocates submitted that it was not the rarest of rare case and hence they should not be given the death penalty. Dey, a 56-year old journalist with city tabloid Mid-Day, was shot dead on June 11, 2011, while he was on his way home in the Powai suburb of Mumbai. The Mumbai Police, which initially investigated the case, arrested eleven persons in 2011, claiming they participated and executed the conspiracy to murder Dey on the instructions of Rajan, who was initially named as an absconding accused. After Rajan’s arrest in 2015, the case was transferred to the CBI, which filed a supplementary charge sheet against him. In its chargesheet filed in 2016, the CBI claimed Rajan ordered the killing over Dey’s proposed books and articles, which, the gangster felt, showed him in poor light. The chargesheet had claimed that the material of the book being written by Dey showed that he was to expose Rajan’s “fake patriotic mask” and show that he had no “concern for the ones who lost their lives in the process of making him a big name’. The CBI also claimed that Rajan did not like being included in a book titled “Chindi-Rags to Riches” on 20 gangsters including him. Rajan, lodged in Tihar jail in Delhi, was produced before the court via video-conferencing. Source: Indian Express