Chhota Rajan sent to Tihar, CBI takes over all cases

Underworld don Chhota Rajan was today sent to hig-security Tihar prison on 14 days of judicial custody as CBI decided to take over all the 71 cases registered by Maharshtra Police against him.
CBI spokesperson said Rajan has been sent to 14-days of judicial custody as his 14-days of police custody in alleged fake passport case ended today.
Agency sources said here today that CBI has taken over all 71 cases against him and it will start re-registering FIRs in them.
Deported after being on the run for 27 years, the 55-year-old gangster, whose real name is Rajendra Sadashiv Nikalje, was remanded to CBI custody in connection with the passport, with identity allegedly procured by him from Indian mission in Harare.

Rajan, once a close aide of Dawood Ibrahim, has been brought to the country to face trial in over 70 cases of murder, extortion and drug smuggling in Delhi and Mumbai.
(Reopens FGN 17)

On FDI inflows, Rajan said India is this year on its way to "our highest ever inflow of FDI".
While the government has removed most of the impediments to inviting FDI, he said there is still "some hesitancy" on part of the foreign investors with the retrospective tax case on Vodafone. "This is an unfortunate thing that happens when you focus" on a few iconic instances.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley have said very clearly that there will be no retrospective taxation, he informed the audience.
Since the Vodafone case is already in the judicial system, to pull it back right now, "it would look like something was not a problem. That's my view of it. It has to follow the natural course," Rajan said.
Vodafone still has not paid "a penny" of what was demanded but it is not as if it is in great difficulty as a result of what happened. "In fact they are investing more in India," he said.

People look at "iconic reforms" like the Goods and Services Tax (GST) and at privatisation and feel that these two are the measures of "whether you are reforming.
"There is lots else happening that people are paying less attention to," he said citing the example of the Aadhaar programme.
"Things are moving. Things are changing. FDI is coming in. FDI makes money in India unlike elsewhere," he said adding that the Prime Minister has "rolled out the red carpet" for investors through his visits abroad.
Rajan emphasised that while India is growing at a good pace, it has the potential to do even better.

"Despite our growing much faster than the rest of the world, the real issue is the rest of the world is growing fairly slowly. Not that we are growing that fast, this (growth) is reasonable by our historical standards but not spectacular," he said.
He cited Jaitley's remarks that India is capable of faster growth.
"One should not think this is it," he said, adding that while India is doing relatively well, the "ideal" will be if the world picked up and grew much more strongly.
He pointed out that India grew very fast between 2003 and 2012 at about 8 per cent.

"What happens when you grow at that pace is sometimes we grow fast enough to outrun the institutions you had for slower growth. We hadn't grown at that pace before in our history. We outran things like acquiring resources," he said.
Since the financial crisis, India has been engaged in a process of rebuilding the institutions, rebuilding transparency in allocation of resources and creating a modern monetary framework, he said.
On inflation, he said the most recent figure for the month of March stood at 4.8 percent, which was below the 5 per cent target set by RBI for March 2017 and on track towards the four per cent targeted after that. "One of the virtues of getting a low and stable inflation rate is that it will also stabilize the currency.