Chota Rajan

 Rajendra Sadashiv Nikalje alias Chota Rajan was once a most trusted comfidante of Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar which now has turned into his bête noire. He was once protege of dilip Buwa and Rose in the ranks of D-Company to become top most trusted lieutenant of Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar.

Born 13 January 1959, in a suburb of Mumbai, Chembur. While living in Tilak Nagar, a big colony for the low-income group(LIG) near Chembur station, Mumbai, Rajan started as a petty criminal as a black marketeer of cinema tickets at Sahakar Cinema which is located in the vicinity of Tilak Nagar. He was imprisoned for assaulting police constables who tried to stop him from selling cinema tickets in black. After being released from the jail, he joined the Bada Rajan gang in 1982. After Bada Rajan was shot dead, Chhota Rajan took over the gang and worked for Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar who had fled to Dubai.

During the Arun Gawli – Dawood gang war in the late eighties, Chota Rajan escaped to Dubai in 1989 and eventually rose to be the right hand of Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar Ibrahim before splitting with him in 1993 and forming an independent gang that frequently clashed with Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar's D-Company. He is wanted for many criminal cases that include extortion, murder, smuggling and drug trafficking. He is also wanted in 70 murder cases and several more attempted murders. It is said that Chota Rajan finances a social organization called "Sahyadri Krida Mandal" that organizes the Ganesh Utsav in Tilaknagar, which has been Rajan's home base. Chota Rajan's wife and two daughters continue to live in Tilaknagar colony.

Chota Rajan was arrested in Bali by Indonesian police on 25 October 2015. Rajan was extradited from Bali to India on 6 November 2015 after 27 years on the run and is currently awaiting trials for ongoing cases in custody. However it is believed that he had surrendered himself under a scheme of approval. On 2 May 2018 he was convicted of murder of a journalist and handed life imprisonment.

Chhota Rajan was born in a Dalit family in the Tilaknagar Colony area of Chembur, Bombay. He worked as a cinema ticket seller in his early days. He started his criminal career by committing petty crimes in the locality and vicinity of Chembur. His mentor Bada Rajan introduced him to black marketing of cinema tickets at Sahakar cinema Ashok Theatre in the 1980s

His mentors were Bada Rajan and Yadagiri of Hyderabad under whom he learned the tricks of the trade. Once Bada Rajan was killed, Nikalje received the throne and the title—Chhota Rajan. For a short period, Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar, Rajan and Arun Gawli worked together. Then, itnis reported that, Gawli's elder brother Papa Gawli was assassinated over a drug deal and a rift formed. Chota Rajan went to Dubai as Gawali had started htting all the henchmen Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar. 

After the 1993 Bombay Serial Blasts  bombings, Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar and Chota Rajan fell out and apart. There were even reports that he tipped off the Research and Analysis Wing about Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar's network. The Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar-Xhota Rajan party was over, the messy end coming in September 2000, with Chhota Shakeel's attack on Chota Rajan in his Bangkok hotel room. Feroz Konkani an expert sharp shooter of D-Company was involved in the attack.

On 26 October 2015, Rajan was arrested in Bali. Acting on a tip-off from Australian police, Indonesian authorities detained Rajan .

After the split from Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar and D-Company, Chota Rajan formed his own gang. Reports of bloody shootouts between Rajan and Dawood's hoodlums have been common since the split. In 1994, Rajan lured one of Dawood's favourite "narco-terrorist" Phillu Khan alias Bakhtiyar Ahmed Khan to a hotel room in Bangkok, where he was tortured to death, having been betrayed by his closest aide and sidekick Mangesh "Mangya" Pawar.

Both Phillu and Mangya were involved in the 1993 blasts as police had filed cases on 15 March 1993 alleging their involvement in the blasts. 

In September 2000, Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar tracked down Chota Rajan in Bangkok. Sharad, used his links with Mumbai-based hotelier Vinod and A. Mishra to track down Rajan in Bangkok, Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar's aide Chhota Shakeel then led the hit. Posing as a pizza delivery man they gunned down the trusted Chota Rajan hitman Rohit Varma and his wife. However their aim of killing Chota Rajan failed, with Chota Rajan escaping through the hotel's roof and fire-escape. He then recovered in a hospital and slipped away to evade capture.

Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar confirmed the attack on the telephone to Rediff.com, saying Rajan tried to escape by jumping out of the window of the first-floor room where he was attacked. He, however, broke his back in the fall and was taken to a hospital.

This failed assassination attempt proved costly for Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar. As Chota Rajan's associates tracked down and shot dead Vinod in 2001 in Mumbai, as well as Sunil Soans – another Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar associate. Both Vinod and Sunil had provided information to Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar's associates of Chota Rajan's whereabouts.

While the killings of Vinod and Sunil Soans did not significantly disrupt D-Company, on 19 January 2003, Chota Rajan's associates then gunned down Sharad – Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar's chief finance manager and money-laundering agent – at the India Club in Dubai. This brazen killing was emblematic of the shift of power between Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar and Chota Rajan. Not only was the execution in a very public setting, but it was also at a location that Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar considered his operational backyard. Intelligence reports have suggested that Sharad's death was a crippling blow to D-Company since much financial and monetary information of the crime syndicate operations managed by Sharad was never fully recovered by Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar.