By Sunita 

Pune: The killing of former corporator Vanraj Andekar once again brought to the anvil the strife in the underworld in Pune. The Andekar gang has been operating for the past four decades. 

Two gangs were formed in the 1980s in Kasba Peth. Pramod Malwadkar was a gang member of the Andekar gang. He separated from it due to his differences with gang leader Balu Andekar. Later, the Andekar and the Malwadkar gangs clashed for over a decade and 6-7 members of both gangs were killed in the gang war. Malwadkar was killed in an encounter with the police in November 19, 1997. This put an end to the war between the two criminal syndicates. 

The series of murders started with the hacking of Pramod Malwadkar’s father by the Andekar gang. To avenge this, the Malwadkar gang attacked Balu Andekar with sickles and killed him on the premises of the Shivajinagar Court on July 17, 1984. 

This had a backdrop of a parallel strife. The then dashing former Commissioner of Police (CP) SS Virk filed a case against Ranga Raju for spying. The hearing was being conducted at the Shivajinagar Court. I was a part of journalists’ group who were attending the hearing. We immediately came to know about the attack on Balu Andekar on the court premises. The police and journalists rushed to the spot, where Andekar was lying in a pool of blood. 

It was a strange coincident. In the history of the State Police Department, two top officers were fighting a legal battle inside the court and two criminal gangs were involved in a bloody clash outside the court.