New Delhi: Amid reports and speculations that Rajendra Nikalje alias Chhota Rajan has passed away due to Covid-19 complications, an official at Delhi's All India Institute of Medical Services (AIIMS) where the former is being treated for the virus on Friday said the underworld don and gangster is still alive.
Rajan, lodged earlier in solitary confinement in one of the biggest cells at the high-security Tihar Jail since his arrest after deportation from Bali, Indonesia, in 2015, was admitted to the AIIMS on April 26.
The 62-year-old, who was not even allowed to interact with the other prisoners in the Tihar Jail due to security concerns, may have contracted the virus from some asymptomatic jail officer, officials reportedly suspect.
Underworld don Chhota Rajan is still alive. He is admitted at AIIMS for treatment of Covid-19, an AIIMS official was quoted by news agency ANI as saying.
Rajan is facing around 70 criminal cases related to extortion and murder in Mumbai. A special court has been constituted to try the cases against Rajan that were later transferred to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
The special CBI court in Mumbai had last month acquitted Rajan and his aide in connection with the murder of Hanif Kadawala, an accused in the 1993 Mumbai serial bomb blasts case.
He was earlier in 2018 convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in the 2011 murder case of journalist Jyotirmoy Dey.