1906 Julio Ribeiro Pradeep Sharma was arrested in Mumbai by the NIA last week. The arrest made front-page news in local newspapers because he was a swashbuckling, risk-taking encounter specialist of the Mumbai police for several years between 1989 and 2008, when he was dismissed from service by Anami Roy, the then Police Commissioner. Anami got rid of him under Article 311 of the Constitution after evidence to show that he was in cahoots with the underworld came to light. In 2014, Sharma decided to challenge his dismissal before the Maharashtra administrative tribunal, which set aside the dismissal order leading to the reinstatement of the Inspector in 2017. Surprisingly, he was posted not to Mumbai City but to the Commissionerate of Thane, neighbouring Mumbai. The Police Commissioner of Thane in 2017 was Param Bir Singh who was later made Police Commissioner of Mumbai and removed from that coveted appointment when his closest confidante, Assistant Inspector Sachin Vaze was arrested for planting 20 gelatin sticks outside the residence of industrialist Mukesh Ambani. Vaze was known to be an acolyte of Sharma, with over a hundred kills under his belt, like Sharma, who boasted of 112!