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{{Short description|Indian politician}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2021}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Pappu Kalani
| image =
| caption =
| birth_date = c. 1951
| birth_place =
| death_place =
| occupation = [[Politician]], [[Extortion]], contract killing, illegal [[gambling]]
| salary =
| networth =
| spouse = [[Jyoti Kalani]]
| children = 3
| website =
| footnotes =
}}

'''Pappu Kalani''' (born c. 1951)<ref>[//economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-1102026,curpg-2.cms "Pappu Kalani was only 35 years old when he was elected president of the Ulhasnagar municipal council in 1986."]</ref> is an Indian criminal-politician from [[Ulhasnagar]]. After emerging as the leader of an organized crime
syndicate in the 1980s,<ref name=ecotimes>{{Cite news
| title = Pappu's Ulhasnagar gambit may backfire
| author = Girish Kuber
| work = [[The Economic Times]]
| url = http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/PoliticsNation/Pappus_Ulhasnagar_gambit_may_backfire/articleshow/msid-1102026,curpg-2.cms
| date = 2007-01-09
| accessdate = 2007-05-24
}}Quote: Suresh "Pappu" Kalani: a man who is seen as the personification of this lawlessness in (Ulhasnagar)</ref> he was elected president of the Ulhasnagar municipal council in 1986. He was elected to [[Maharashtra Vidhan Sabha]] in 1990 elections as [[Indian National Congress]] candidate from [[Ulhasnagar (Vidhan Sabha constituency)]]. He won 1995 and 1999 assembly elections as Independent.<ref>{{cite web |title=Elections results Analysis 1078–2004 |url= http://eci.nic.in/eci_main/electionanalysis/AE/S13/partycomp55.htm |publisher=[[Election Commission of India]]|accessdate=27 January 2010 }}</ref> He won two elections in the period 1992–2001 when he was in jail on murder charges. He was elected from Ulhasnagar again in 2004 as a member of RPI (Athavale) group. His formal name is '''Suresh Budharmal Kalani''' and Pappu may be a nickname, though he prefers it as part of the formal name, writing '''Suresh (Pappu) Budharmal Kalani''' in his election papers.<ref>[http://ceo.maharashtra.gov.in/genesys /55/Suresh(Pappu)BudharmalKalani/Suresh(Pappu)BudharmalKalani.htm Suresh (Pappu) Budharmal ]{{dead link|date=March 2018 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref>

He is currently on bail in 19 cases including eight of murder<ref name=dons>
{{cite news
|title = The States: Dons in a new role
|author = Dionne Bunsha
|work = [[The Hindu]]
|url = http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl2125/stories/20041217001704400.htm
|date = 2004-12-17
|accessdate = 2007-05-24
|url-status = usurped
|archiveurl = https://web.archive.org/web/20070310185007/http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl2125/stories/20041217001704400.htm
|archivedate = 10 March 2007
}}</ref> and was most recently elected the [[Member of the Legislative Assembly (India)|MLA]] for Ulhasnagar from the [[Republican Party of India (Athavale)]] in the [[2004 Maharashtra state assembly elections]].

Pappu Kalani served a life sentence on 3 December 2013 in a 23-yr-old murder case of Ghanashyam Bhatija. Ghanashyam Bhatija was murdered on 27 February 1990 near the Pinto Resorts in Ulhasnagar of Thane district. His brother Inder Bhatija, who had seen the murder, was also shot dead on 27 April 1999 despite having police protection.<ref name="Pappu Kalani, 3 others get life sentence in 23-yr-old murder case">{{cite web | url=http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/pappu-kalani-3-others-get-life-sentence-in-23yrold-murder-case/1202661/ | title=Pappu Kalani, 3 others get life sentence in 23-yr-old murder case | work=The Indian Express| agency=Press Trust of India| date=3 December 2013 | accessdate=4 September 2016}}</ref>

==Life and career==
Born into a wealthy family, Pappu Kalani's uncle Dunichand Kalani was the president of the local unit of [[Indian National Congress]]. The family ran a liquor business and owned a number of distilleries and hotels.<ref name=surat>
{{cite news
|title = Pappu Kalani is free: bluster intact, not his base
|author = Tanushree Chakraborty
|work = [[The Indian Express]]
|url = http://www.indianexpress.com/res/web/pIe/ie20010906/top6.html
|date = 6 September 2001
|accessdate = 2007-05-24
|url-status = dead
|archiveurl = https://web.archive.org/web/20070929125755/http://www.indianexpress.com/res/web/pIe/ie20010906/top6.html
|archivedate = 29 September 2007
}}Pappu Kalani is quoted as saying: ‘'There is no politician in India who has contested two elections from jail and has won both. I am among the very few persons in the country with eight TADA cases registered against me'’</ref> In the 1970s, [[Ulhasnagar]] was a booming lawless town settled by entrepreneurial refugees who had emigrated from [[Sindh]], Pakistan after the [[Partition of India]] in 1947. Sharp business practices (Ulhasnagar was known for its "duplicate"s or forged goods) combined with [[illegal construction]] and unauthorised industrial units made for an atmosphere where "protection" emerged as a profitable business.<ref name=ecotimes/>

A number of gangs were soon working under the patronage of political parties. Pappu Kalani's uncle Keemat Kalani, also affiliated with the Congress party, ran the gang headed by Chiman Tejwani,<ref name=ecotimes/> while the opposing parties, under politician Gop Behrani, employed the gang of Govind Vachani and [[Gopal Rajwani]]. It is reported that both gangs were connected to the [[Dawood Ibrahim]] gang. They also use media effectively, and hush money were regularly paid to journalists.<ref name=pelf>
{{cite news | title = Three Ps rule Ulhas: Pelf, Politicians & Pappu
| author = Yogesh Pawar
| work = [[The Indian Express]]
| url = http://www.expressindia.com/ie/daily/19990303/ige03076p.html
| date = 1999-03-03
| accessdate = 2007-05-24
}}</ref>

In 1983, Gopal Rajwani was for a while aligned with Pappu Kalani, and they executed the brutal knife murder of the
editor A V Narayan of [[Blitz (newspaper)|Blitz]] magazine.<ref name=pelf/><ref name=murder>
{{cite news
|title = Sena leader Gopal Rajwani shot dead
|author = Jake Khan, Ulhasnagar
|publisher = [[India Abroad]]
|url = http://www.indiaabroad.com/news/2000/jan/25jake.htm
|archive-url = https://archive.today/20120909161438/http://www.indiaabroad.com/news/2000/jan/25jake.htm
|url-status = dead
|archive-date = 2012-09-09
|date = 2000-01-25
|accessdate = 2007-05-24
|location = Ulhasnagar
}}</ref> Rajwani was
arrested for this, but he was eventually acquitted due to lack of witnesses
and shoddy prosecution. Nothing came out of this dastardly murder however as the Indian press
never stood up against this criminal.

In 1986, Pappu Kalani was elected president of the Ulhasnagar Municipal Council (UMC),
and the same year, he was chosen by the [[Indian National Congress]] party as
its candidate for the [[Maharashtra Vidhan Sabha|state legislature]] from
Ulhasnagar, and easily won the
seat.<ref name=ecotimes/>

Meanwhile, Gopal Rajwani and Pappu had fallen out
over the division of extortion money.
In April 1985, Rajwani was arrested in an extortion case, apparently at
Kalani's
bidding. As Rajwani
was being escorted to the police station in a rickshaw, Kalani
arranged for his men to attack him with bombs and guns.<ref name=murder/> Rajwani survived the
attack and eventually relocated to [[Dubai]], with the help of [[Haji Mastan]], a
notorious smuggler and senior don of that time.

In April 1989, Pappu's uncle Dudhichand Kalani was murdered, allegedly by the
Govind Vachani / Gopal Rajwani gang,<ref name=supreme>
{{cite web
|title=Suresh alias Pappu Bhudharmal Kalani v. State of Maharashtra
|author=Justices K.T. Thomas & D.P. Mohapatra
|publisher=[[Supreme Court of India]]
|url=http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:oyY65ZSwuT4J:www.austlii.edu.au/~andrew/CommonLII/INSC/2001/140.html+SURESH+ALIAS+PAPPU+BHUDHARMAL+KALANI+v.+STATE+OF+MAHARASHTRA&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=firefox-a
|date=2 March 2001
|accessdate=2007-05-29
}}{{dead link|date=January 2017 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}The prosecution case presented at the start of this judgement details clearly the story of the long-standing rivalry between the Gopal Rajwani and Pappu Kalani gangs. Then it discusses in detail the special TADA court judgement refusing to transfer the case to an ordinary sessions court (as opposed to a terrorist court) arguing that the use of an illegal firearm, and also the fact that ''prima facie'', Pappu Kalani was identified by two witnesses (including a dying declaration) using the firearm to execute a murder (based on spent cartridges), is sufficient at least to proceed for trial under TADA.</ref> at the
instance of Gop Behrani.<ref name=pelf/> This led to reprisal killings – as many as 22 murders in five
months. It was said during this period that
"there would be a killing in Ulhasnagar every Tuesday."<ref name=ecotimes/>
It was during this period that Pappu Kalani emerged as the leader of his own
organized crime gang.

===Bhateja, Anna, and Jadhav murders===

In February and April 1990, nephews of Gop Behrani, Ghanashyam and Inder Bhateja were
shot dead, despite having been given state police protection.<ref name=bhateja>
{{cite news
|title = Tada charges against Kalani dropped in Bhateja murders
|publisher = The Indian Express
|url = http://www.expressindia.com/ie/daily/19991028/ige28138.html
|date = 1999-10-28
|accessdate = 2007-05-24
|url-status = dead
|archiveurl = https://web.archive.org/web/20040928133529/http://expressindia.com/ie/daily/19991028/ige28138.html
|archivedate = 28 September 2004
}}</ref> Also shot dead in 1990 were gangster Anna,
and rickshaw union leader and bodyguard of Rajwani, Maruti Jadhav,<ref name=surat/> both of whom were
affiliated with the Gopal Rajwani gang. Jadhav in his dying declaration, as well as another person who was injured in the revolver attack, identified Pappu Kalani personally, and he would later be refused bail in
this murder case.<ref name=bail>
{{cite news
|title = Pappu Kalani refused bail in murder case
|author = The Indian Express
|url = http://www.expressindia.com/ie/daily/19980910/25350034.html
|date = 10 September 1998
|accessdate = 2007-05-25
|url-status = dead
|archiveurl = https://web.archive.org/web/20040705052604/http://www.expressindia.com/ie/daily/19980910/25350034.html
|archivedate = 5 July 2004
|author-link = Indian Express
}}</ref>

In 1990, when Pappu Kalani was formally named in some of these murders,<ref name=fear>{{cite news|title=The F-factor: Kalani certain of clean sweep |author=Gouri Shah |work=[[The Economic Times]] |url=http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/880573.cms |date=11 October 2004 |accessdate=2007-05-24 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20041025171356/http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/880573.cms |archivedate=25 October 2004 }}</ref> he was expelled from the [[Indian National Congress|Congress]] party.

In 1992, when the clean-imaged [[Sudhakarrao Naik]] took over as Chief
Minister from [[Sharad Pawar]],
he launched a drive against criminal-politicians. Media pressure increased tremendously after the September 1992 shootout where [[Dawood Ibrahim]]'s gang killed Shailesh Haldankar of the [[Arun Gawli]] gang as well as several on-duty policemen at [[Mumbai]]'s JJ Hospital.<ref name=surat/> Thereafter,
Pappu Kalani were arrested in November 1992, along with some others gangsters. Pappu was charged with
the gang murders from 1990 and with the JJ Hospital shootout-ably executed by D-Company's Shyam Kishore Garikapatti alias "Black Scorpion"; a total of 19 cases were filed against him.<ref name=surat/>
Several appeals against his incarceration failed – the court
found him sufficiently implicated in the Maruti Jadhav murder to label him as However, TADA laws were found inappropriate in some other charges –
particularly for both the Bhateja murders,<ref name=bhateja/> and also
in the JJ Hospital shootout case, which were transferred to a sessions court.<ref>
{{cite news
| title = Two discharged
| publisher = The Tribune, Chandigarh
| url = http://www.tribuneindia.com/1998/98sep17/spotlite.htm
| date = 1998-09-17
| accessdate = 2007-05-25
}}</ref> However, none of these cases progressed to trial.
Altogether, he spent nine years in jail under TADA before being eventually released on
bail in 2002.

At one point, Sudhakarrao made a statement that the state leader of [[Indian National Congress]] party and erstwhile Chief Minister [[Sharad Pawar]], had asked him to
"go easy on Pappu Kalani".<ref name=fear/>
At another time,
Chief Minister [[Manohar Joshi]] of [[Shiv Sena]] announced his
intention to prosecute criminal-politicians,<ref>
{{cite news
|title=Joshi seeks Cabinet nod for probe
|author=Prafulla Marpakwar
|work=The Indian Express
|url=http://www.expressindia.com/ie/daily/19970609/16050043.html
|date=1997-06-09
|accessdate=2007-05-25
|url-status=dead
|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20060509222113/http://expressindia.com/ie/daily/19970609/16050043.html
|archivedate=9 May 2006
}}</ref> but political realities ensured that nothing much was done.

Under [[Indian law]], someone who has not been sentenced to more
than two years for a crime cannot be considered guilty of a major crime and
is free to
fight elections. Thus, despite being in jail, Kalani kept fighting
and winning the assembly seat from Ulhasnagar, partly because of the
family's muscle, but also because in his first term, Kalani had worked
to improve the roads and the water supply.<ref name=dons/>

In 1999, when his mentor [[Sharad Pawar]] formed the [[Nationalist Congress Party|National Congress Party]], Pappu
also joined it. However, mounting public pressure proved disruptive for the
nascent party and he was forced to resign. At this time, he handed over the Municipal
corporation to his wife Jyoti Kalani, who would also soon be arrested on
charges
of forgery, non-payment of revenue and illegal liquor manufacturing.<ref name=ecotimes/>

===Rajwani murder===

Meanwhile, in January 2000, arch rival Gopal Rajwani was shot dead in a hail
of bullets as he was coming out of a car at the magistrate's court to attend
a case.<ref name=murder/> It was widely believed that Pappu Kalani, at the time still in jail,
may have masterminded it.<ref name=murder/>

Immediately after his release from jail in 2001, several cases arose where he
allegedly tried to intimidate one Bhoir family, part of whose land had been illegally encroached upon to build the Seema Holiday Home (since demolished) owned by the Kalanis, and also the shopowner Ramesh Rohra.<ref>{{cite news|title=Pappu Kalani's bail may be revoked |author=Shibu Thomas |publisher=in.news.yahoo.com |url=http://in.news.yahoo.com/031128/149/29xui.html |date=2003-11-28 |accessdate=2007-05-30 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20050103163634/http://in.news.yahoo.com/031128/149/29xui.html |archivedate=3 January 2005 }}</ref>

In 2004, Pappu Kalani again won the assembly elections, as a candidate of the
[[Republican Party of India (Athavale)]].<ref name=dons/> His wife however,
continues to be with the [[Nationalist Congress Party|National Congress Party]].

In 2005, the Bombay High Court ordered the demolition of 855 illegal
structures in Ulhasnagar, Pappu Kalani, a large part of whose extortion money depended on
permitting illegal constructions, passed a law permitting most of them to be
legalized.<ref>
{{cite web
| title = Pappu Kalani: Hero of Ulhasnagar Also known as Robinhood of Ulhasnagar
| url = http://bombaylives.blogspot.com/2005/12/pappu-kalani-hero-of-ulhasnagar.html
| date = 2005-12-28
| accessdate = 2007-05-24
}}</ref> However, many structures did not even pay the legalization fees, and
large scale demolitions were launched in Ulhasnagar for most of 2006.

In the municipal elections of 2007, despite very little electioneering by
opposing groups, Pappu Kalani's group mustered only 15 seats (out of 76),
and it is thought that the influence of musclepower may have waned
considerably in Ulhasnagar.<ref name=indexp>
{{cite news
| title = Beginning of the end for Kalanis?
| work = [[The Indian Express]]
| url = http://in.news.yahoo.com/070208/48/6bxhw.html
| date = 2007-02-09
| accessdate = 2007-05-24
}} {{Dead link|date=October 2010|bot=H3llBot}}</ref>

==Family==
Pappu Kalani's wife [[Jyoti Kalani]] emerged on her own during the years when he
was out of power or in prison, becoming the president (mayor) of the powerful Ulhasnagar
Municipal Council. In recent years, she too faced several charges of intimidation and forgery,<ref>
{{cite news
|title=Kalani's wife held for forgery
|publisher=Cybernoon
|url=http://www.cybernoon.com/DisplayArticle.asp?section=fromthepress&subsection=news&xfile=May2004_news_standard1211
|date=28 May 2004
|accessdate=2007-05-24
|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20070927033049/http://www.cybernoon.com/DisplayArticle.asp?section=fromthepress&subsection=news&xfile=May2004_news_standard1211
|archivedate=27 September 2007
|url-status=dead
}}</ref> and lost the 2007 municipal elections.<ref name=indexp/> His son
Omi Kalani has been named in several extortion and assault cases in 2005,<ref>
{{cite news
|title = Case lodged against Pappu Kalani's son
|work = [[The Indian Express]]
|url = http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=162804
|date = 2005-12-26
|accessdate = 2007-05-24
|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20110110011255/http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=162804
|archive-date = 10 January 2011
|url-status = dead}}
</ref> and he also has a daughter Seema.

In 2004, his brother Narayan Kalani was arrested for three murders dating back to the
internecine gang warfare of 1990.<ref>
{{cite news
| title = Pappu Kalani's brother arrested
| work = [[The Times of India]]
| url = http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/649491.cms
| date = 30 April 2004
| accessdate = 2007-05-09
}}</ref>

==References==
{{reflist}}

{{Organised crime in India}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kalani, Pappu}}
[[Category:Maharashtra MLAs 1990–1995]]
[[Category:Maharashtra MLAs 1995–1999]]
[[Category:Maharashtra MLAs 1999–2004]]
[[Category:Maharashtra MLAs 2004–2009]]
[[Category:Sindhi people]]
[[Category:Indian crime bosses]]
[[Category:Indian politicians convicted of crimes]]
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:1951 births]]
[[Category:People from Ulhasnagar]]
[[Category:Politicians convicted of murder]]
[[Category:Criminals from Maharashtra]]
[[Category:Republican Party of India (Athawale) politicians]]
[[Category:Indian National Congress politicians]]

Pappu Kalani - Revision history

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