[7] In the 1970s, Ulhasnagar was a booming lawless town settled by entrepreneurial refugees who had emigrated from Sindh, Pakistan after the Partition of India in 1947.
[8] In 1983, Gopal Rajwani was for a while aligned with Pappu Kalani, and they executed the brutal knife murder of the editor A. V. Narayan of Blitz magazine.
As Rajwani was being escorted to the police station in a rickshaw, Kalani arranged for his men to attack him with bombs and guns.
[9] Rajwani survived the attack and eventually relocated to Dubai, with the help of Haji Mastan, a notorious smuggler and senior don of that time.
[citation needed] In April 1989, Pappu's uncle Dudhichand Kalani was murdered, allegedly by the Govind Vachani / Gopal Rajwani gang,[10] at the instance of Gop Behrani.
In February and April 1990, nephews of Gop Behrani, Ghanashyam and Inder Bhateja were shot dead, despite having been given state police protection.
Pappu was charged with the gang murders from 1990 and with the JJ Hospital shootout-ably executed by D-Company's Shyam Kishore Garikapatti alias "Black Scorpion"; a total of 19 cases were filed against him.
[citation needed] At one point, Sudhakarrao made a statement that the state leader of Indian National Congress party and erstwhile Chief Minister Sharad Pawar, had asked him to "go easy on Pappu Kalani".
[13] At another time, Chief Minister Manohar Joshi of Shiv Sena announced his intention to prosecute criminal-politicians,[15] but political realities ensured that nothing much was done.
At this time, he handed over the Municipal corporation to his wife Jyoti Kalani, who would also soon be arrested on charges of forgery, non-payment of revenue and illegal liquor manufacturing.
[3] Meanwhile, in January 2000, arch rival Gopal Rajwani was shot dead in a hail of bullets as he was coming out of a car at the magistrate's court to attend a case.
[9] Immediately after his release from jail in 2001, several cases arose where he allegedly tried to intimidate one Bhoir family, part of whose land had been illegally encroached upon to build the Seema Holiday Home (since demolished) owned by the Kalanis, and also the shopowner Ramesh Rohra.