RUDRAPUR: Prakash Narayan Pandey, a former Chhota Rajan gangster deported from Vietnam in 2010, has asked the Uttarakhand government for permission to let him travel to a temple outside the jail for an initiation ceremony to become a monk, people familiar with the matter said.

Prakash Narayan Pandey aka Bunty Pandey was detained in Hanoi in October 2010 following an Interpol red notice first issued against him in 2002 at the request of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

Almora jail superintendent Jayant Pangtey said Pandey, who is also known as PP, has said he wanted to become a monk.

“We have received a handwritten letter from PP in which he has said that he wants to repent for his crimes and become a monk. He has requested permission to hold an initiation programme at a temple outside the jail complex,” said Pangtey said on Monday.

Pangtey said the request would likely be rejected given Pandey’s track record.

“We have forwarded his letter to the higher authorities. It is not clear what his motive was… Since he is a very cunning criminal, we can’t permit him to hold such an initiation programme,” said Pangtey.

Haldwani-based journalist Arvind Malik suggested that it was unlikely that PP had changed his ways. “He is very cunning… As I understand, he plans to extort money from industrialists and traders in the name of initiation programme,” Malik said.

Prakash Pandey, 45, hails from the Chhoi area of Ramnagar in Nainital district and was shifted to the Almora prison just two months back, police said.

Following his detention in 2010, Indian authorities said Bunty had been living in Cambodia “for some years” on an Indian passport issued to him by the Indian embassy in Phnom Penh under the assumed name of Vijay Subhash Sharma.

Alleged to be a top lieutenant of fugitive underworld don Chhota Rajan, Pandey had gone underground after an attack on Chhota Rajan by rival don Dawood Ibrahim’s sharpshooter Munna Jhingada in Bangkok in September 2000.

Pandey faced about 40 criminal cases in 2010 including the daring daylight murder of East-West Airlines chief Thakiyuddin Wahid in Mumbai in 1995 on Rajan’s order. He was also allegedly involved in the abduction of two Delhi youths from Mumbai in 2004.

Pandey also figured on Mumbai police’s most wanted list of gangsters at number 36.

After being brought to the country, Pandey was moved from one jail to another in view of the court cases against him. During the Covid-19 pandemic, he was lodged in Sitarganj jail in Udam Singh Nagar and later shifted to Hardwar jail.