Mumbai, June 8: A Mumbai court today framed charges in the four-year-old murder of Mid-Day crime reporter Jyotirmoy Dey, shot dead on a Mumbai street after allegedly annoying a mafia boss with his reports.

All the 10 accused pleaded "not guilty" to the charges of conspiracy and murder and links with fugitive underworld don Chhota Rajan.

Police accuse Rajan of hiring the killers after Dey wrote articles suggesting he was plotting the shooting of Dawood Ibrahim's brother Iqbal Kaskar in Mumbai. Once fast friends, Dawood and Rajan had turned rival gang leaders and sworn enemies.

One of the 11 originally charged with the December 2011 murder, bookie Vinod Asrani, is dead. Among the rest is Dey's former colleague and fellow beat reporter Jigna Vora.

Jigna, who is on bail, lives in Mumbai with her parents and son and is a key accused along with Vinod and Satish Kalia.

She was chargesheeted in February 2012 after the police intercepted a purported phone conversation between Vinod's brother Manoj and Rajan.

The 3,500-page chargesheet accuses Jigna of passing crucial information about Dey's address and his motorbike number to Rajan. Dey was shot soon after leaving home on his two-wheeler.

Jigna is accused of instigating Rajan to kill Dey because of her professional rivalry with him.

Vinod, a public telephone booth operator who rose to become a bookie-cum-builder, was a Rajan aide and had allegedly been tasked with pointing Dey out to the shooters. Vinod died this April of cirrhosis of liver.

Satish, another alleged Rajan henchman, is the alleged killer. He had moved to Thiruvananthapuram to start a new life after the birth of his daughter and was living there as Rohit Thangappan Joseph before Rajan allegedly summoned him to put together a team to kill Dey.

Satish had then drafted the other accused: Abhijeet Shinde, Arun Dake, Sachin Gaikwad, Anil Waghmode, Nilesh Shendge, Mangesh Agawane, Paulson Joseph and Deepak Sisodia.

Lodged in the Arthur Road Jail, Satish appears to have "friends" among the police constabulary. On April 9, after a hearing, he was taken in a police van to the nearby Mahalakshmi Racecourse area. His wife, who was waiting, was allowed to enter the van. The cops have been suspended.

Today, Satish was ferried to and from the court amid tight security.