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Rajan uses bed-sheets to escape from hospital

BANGKOK (AFP) - Dreaded gangster Chhota Rajan Friday used knotted bed-sheets to escape from the hospital room where he was being held under Thai police custody, officials said.

"He used beds-sheet to escape from the fourth floor of the hospital this morning," said Lieutenant Colonel Worachart Rojchan.

Rajan was facing a bid to extradite him to India, where authorities want him to stand trial on 17 counts of murder and other mob-related charges.

New Delhi has revoked Rajan's passport on the grounds that his travel documents were not in order, and he was under provisional arrest in Bangkok.

Rajan was wounded in September by gunmen who burst into a Bangkok apartment and killed his associate Rohit Verma in what appeared to be a shooting ordered by Rajan's rival, Dubai-based gangster Dawood Ibrahim.

Three Pakistani men were among those arrested for the shooting.

Rajan was once Ibrahim's right-hand man in the Bombay underworld, but a series of bomb blasts in the city in 1993 which killed 300 people led to the two becoming sworn enemies, divided along religious lines.

Their respective gangs have since taken their violent rivalry across Asia.

Rajan, who reached Bangkok earlier this year after fleeing to Dubai in 1988, is believed to control a crime empire that takes in extortion rackets, drug trafficking and film financing.

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