Pappu Kalani

Suresh alias Pappu Budharmal Kalani, known popularly as Pappu Kalani (born 1951) is an Indian criminal-politician from Ulhasnagar, Maharashtra.

After emerging as the leader of an organized crime syndicate in the 1980s, 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 constituency. He won 1995 and 1999 assembly elections as Independent. He won two elections in the period 1992–2001 when he was in jail on murder charges. He was elected the MLA from Ulhasnagar again in 2004 as a member of the Republican Party of India (Athawale).

Kalani was once on bail in 19 cases including eight of murder. He was given a life sentence on 3 December 2013 as a result of the 23-year-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. Kalani was later acquitted on 18 November 2017 "...on basis of lack of evidence..."

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. 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.

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 magazine. Rajwani was arrested for this, but he was eventually acquitted due to lack of witnesses and shoddy prosecution.

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 state legislature from Ulhasnagar, and easily won the seat. at the instance of Gop Behrani. Also shot dead in 1990 were gangster Anna, and rickshaw union leader and bodyguard of Rajwani, Maruti Jadhav,

In 1990, when Pappu Kalani was formally named in some of these murders, he was expelled from the 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. 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". 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.

In 2004, Pappu Kalani again won the assembly elections, as a candidate of the Republican Party of India (Athavale). 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.

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, and lost the 2007 municipal elections. and he also has a daughter Seema.

In 2004, his brother Narayan Kalani was arrested for three murders dating back to the ruinous gang warfare of 1990.