Pramod Mahajan

Mumbai, June 3: Eight years ago in the summer of 2006, tragedy had first struck the Mahajan-Munde family with brother shooting brother. Today, the brother-in-law who took the fatally wounded man to hospital died in a car crash.

On April 22, 2006, Pramod Mahajan’s younger brother Pravin had set out from his Thane home around 7am. Armed with a licensed revolver, he was headed for Purna Building, Pramod’s residence in Worli.

Minutes after landing there, he fished out the weapon and pumped three bullets into Pramod’s abdomen and lower chest. As the gunshots rang out, Pramod’s wife Rekha and domestic help Mahesh Wankhede rushed out and found the wounded 56-year-old BJP leader bleeding on the floor.

It was brother-in-law Gopinath Munde — he was Pramod’s sister Pradnya’s husband and lived on an upper floor in the same building — who rushed the profusely bleeding man to Hinduja hospital. On the way, Pramod had asked Munde: “What wrong did I do that my own brother had to kill me?” He died 12 days later, on May 3.

A month later, on June 2, Pramod’s personal assistant Bibek Maitra and son Rahul were rushed to Apollo Hospital in Delhi after a late-night drinking session that reportedly included champagne and cocaine. Maitra died of a suspected drug overdose, while Rahul recovered.

In July, Rahul got engaged to childhood friend Shweta Singh, a Jet Airways pilot. On August 4, Delhi police charged Rahul and five others with possession of drugs, financing illicit traffic and harbouring offenders under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act.

The chargesheet said Sahil Zaroo had procured the drug at the instance of Rahul and later, along with Maitra, they had snorted it at Pramod’s official 7 Safdarjung Road residence.

But the case did not hinder Rahul’s marriage, and on August 29, he wed Shweta at his Worli residence. Within two years, in 2008, they divorced after Shweta accused Rahul of mental and physical abuse.

Days later, Rahul — he tried his hand at being a pilot but failed — participated in the reality TV show, Bigg Boss. Two years later, on another TV reality show — a swayamvar — he chose Calcutta girl Dimpy Ganguly and married her in 2010. In four months, Dimpy returned to Calcutta alleging that Rahul had physically abused her.

She returned to Mumbai a while later after the two families sorted things out and the couple appeared together on many reality shows. Recently, however, they filed for divorce and appealed to a family court to allow them to skip the six-month cooling off period. But the court rejected the plea.

Between Rahul’s weddings, the Mahajan murder trial began on March 21, 2007, against Pravin who surrendered at Worli police station within minutes of shooting Pramod.

The trial witnessed testimonies by Munde and wife Pradnya — they had first met in college at Ambajogai in Maharashtra — Pramod’s wife Rekha and daughter Poonam, and Pravin’s wife Sarangi.

Rekha told the sessions court that Pravin had demanded Rs 1 crore from her husband and shot him after he refused. Pravin made allegations about Pramod’s character. In December 2007, Pravin was sentenced to life imprisonment but his murder motive remained unknown.

After nearly two years in jail, Pravin was released on a 14-day furlough on November 28, 2009. A day before he was to return to Nashik jail, the 50-year-old suffered a brain haemorrhage. On December 11, Pravin slipped into a coma and died on March 3, 2010, at Thane’s Jupiter Hospital.

Amid all this, Munde launched the political careers of his daughter, Pankaja, and Pramod’s daughter Poonam. Ignoring his nephew Dhananjay’s claim, Munde got Pankaja elected MLA from his home constituency of Parli in Beed district in the 2009 Assembly elections. However, Poonam lost from the Ghatkopar West Assembly seat in Mumbai that year. She finally fulfilled her father’s political dream when she trounced Sunil Dutt’s daughter Priya from Mumbai North West in last month’s general election.

Munde’s decision to pick Pankaja over his nephew strained relations between him and his elder brother, Pandit Anna Munde. In December 2011, Dhananjay rebelled against him. Backed by NCP’s Ajit Pawar, Dhananjay put up Independent candidates who defeated official BJP candidates in the Parli municipal polls.

In November 2012, Dhananjay brought an NCP panel to power in Munde’s native village of Nathra in Beed, winning all seven seats in the gram panchayat elections. The NCP worked hard to defeat Munde in the Lok Sabha polls, but he won by 1.36 lakh votes against NCP’s Suresh Dhas.

Named rural development minister in the Modi ministry, Munde was set to lead the BJP campaign for the Maharashtra elections later this year. Party workers wanted him to return to the state in case a Sena-BJP alliance came to power. But the car crash upset all plans.