Considered Expert In Underworld Coverage, Sanjay Raut Once Chided Dawood Ibrahim

Raut is a big name in Maharashtra politics today, but in the 80s he used to do crime reporting in Mumbai.

Mumbai: Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut has been arrested in the money laundering case related to the Patra Chawl scam of more than one thousand crore rupees. Before arresting him, three teams of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) also raided his three bases. Raut was detained from his bungalow ‘Maitri’ and brought to the ED office and arrested after an 8-hour interrogation. Raut is a big name in Maharashtra politics today, but in the 80s he used to do crime reporting in Mumbai.

Sanjay Raut was considered an expert in underworld reporting

Sanjay Raut, who started his career with Lokprabha magazine, was considered an expert in underworld reporting. His reports on Dawood Ibrahim, Chhota Rajan, and the underworld were widely discussed in Mumbai. Raut’s name grew in the world of reporting and he was noticed by Shiv Sena supremo Balasaheb Thackeray.

Raut’s visits to Matoshree increased and the Shiv Sena chief offered a 29-year-old Raut to become the executive editor of Shiv Sena mouthpiece ‘Saamana‘. Raut could not turn down the offer of the Shiv Sena chief and he has been its executive editor for the past 30 years.

He came close to Uddhav Thackeray after Balasaheb’s death in 2012. The way Uddhav formed the MVA government with Congress and NCP in 2019, Raut came to be called the ‘think tank’ of Shiv Sena.

When Sanjay Raut scolded Dawood Ibrahim

It is said about Raut that despite being a crime reporter, he never went to the police and never met any police officer regarding any crime-related news. Dawood Ibrahim used to be the architect of underworld news of Raut, who did crime reporting. It is also said that Dawood Ibrahim used to visit Express Towers frequently to give the news to Sanjay Raut. Both used to sit and talk in the canteen here. This happened many years before Dawood’s name cropped up in the 1993 Mumbai blasts.

On 16 January 2020, at an event in Pune, Sanjay Raut himself confessed that he had met Dawood. The Sena leader also claimed that he had once rebuked Dawood Ibrahim. “I have seen him, I have met him, I have spoken to him and I have also admonished him,” news agency PTI quoted him as saying.