Mumbai’s famed crime fighter Daya Nayak back in police service

Mumbai: Famed crime fighter Daya Nayak is back in the Mumbai police force after spending nearly six and half years in the doghouse.

Reinstated into the force after his prolonged suspension in the disproportionate assets case, Nayak reported for duty in the local Arms wing of the Mumbai Police on Saturday.

He will have to maintain a low profile for some time – a let-down for a man whose prime occupation in the late 90s and early 2000 was to gun down underworld gangsters.

The reinstatement of Nayak, who was suspended on January 23, 2006 for allegedly misusing official position and amassing wealth, came a departmental police committee that reviewed his case cleared him of wrongdoing.

Mumbai Police Commissioner Arup Patnaik has ordered Nayak’s reinstatement following a recommendation made by the department committee.

The committee based its recommendation on a clean chit given him by then Director-General of Police S S Virk, who in October 2009 refused to allow Nayak’s prosecution in the disproportionate assets case, saying that there were no sufficient grounds to do so. He also cleared Nayak of all the charges against him.

Nayak’s trouble began after self-confessed mole of the underworld, Ketan Tirodkar, filed a private complaint against him before a special court in November 2003 for allegedly violating the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA).

Tirodkar alleged that Nayak had links with the underworld and that he would extort money from underworld gangsters, including Chhota Shakheel.

Law finally caught up with Nayak, who was arrested in the disproportionate assets case on January 22, 2006 and suspended from the police force the following day.

Nayak was, however, released on bail nearly two months later by the Bombay High court. This came after the Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) failed to file a charge-sheet against him within the stipulated 60-day period.

Forty-four-year-old Nayak has come a long way – from being a boy who came to Mumbai from his Yennehole village in south Kanara district of Karnataka nearly three decades ago. He worked as a waiter in a hotel, studied in night schools, to later becoming a name to reckon with in the city police force, building a high school in his native village and to facing allegations of links with the underworld.

When Nayak’s going was good, Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan had inaugurated the Radha Nayak high school that he had set up in his village, Yennehole, in memory of his mother, in early 2000s.

“Now that he has been given relatively insignificant posting the Local Arms department, he will not be dealing with underworld criminals as he did in the past.

If he bides his time and works sincerely, there are strong chances that Nayak will once again be back in the good books of the top police brass.

In such an event, he will get a good posting,” said a senior police officer who has known him for a long time.