BENGALURU: The murder of pub owner Manish Shetty, allegedly by rival gangster Vicky Shetty in the city last month, is the latter's "attempt to climb up the ladder in the underworld, besides personal rivalry", according to a senior police officer. Discounting the 'stature' of Manish and Vicky in the crime abyss, the officer said neither was a big name in the gangland of Karnataka, as is being projected. "Manish was murdered over personal rivalry.
He had a criminal record. Vicky Shetty is a gangster, but of not much reckoning. At one time, he was an associate of extradited don Ravi Poojary and has been using this connection to build his image," said the officer.
"Vicky Shetty's projection as a ganglord is only going to benefit him. It will serve his purpose of creating fear among the people and his targets. This is the typical modus operandi of desperate criminals who want to scale up the ladder in the world of crime," the officer added.
Around 9pm October 15, Manish was shot outside his Duet Pub, off Brigade Road, by bike-borne assailants with a smooth-bore breech loading gun, and then hacked with a machete. Two days later, police had arrested Shashikiran alias Munna (45) and Nitya Shetty alias Nikki (29) from Somwarpet in Kodagu, Ganesha (39) from Mangaluru and Akshay (32) from Bantwal.
According to the police, Manish and Nitya were involved in a gang war some years ago in Mangaluru, and the latter had nurtured a rivalry against the former since then. Meanwhile, two regional TV channels in Bengaluru and Mangaluru had allegedly received phone calls from a person identifying himself as Vicky Shetty, who claimed responsibility for the Manish murder case and said it was an act of revenge for a murder in coastal Karnataka in September, hinting at gangster Kishan Hegde's murder in Udupi on September 24. Udupi police had arrested Manoj Kodikere and his associates in the murder case.
"Hegde and Kodikere were into financing and money-lending business. Hegde reportedly owed huge amounts of money to Kodikere. In an audio that had gone viral, he was heard threatening Kodikere that he will not return the money to him," said another police officer. "Hegde may have been murdered to send a message across to others whom Kodikere had lent money to," he added.