Daya Nayak (Encounter Specialist)

Some Lesser Known Facts About Daya Nayak

• Daya Nayak was raised by his parents in a lower-middle class South-Indian family.

  

• Daya Nayak studied at a Kannada medium school which was built by his grandfather but he only studied there till 7th standard.

• In 1979, Daya Nayak moved from his native village to Mumbai after his father asked him to earn some money to help the family.

• He worked at a hotel canteen and used to sleep on the hotel’s porch. He continued his education in Mumbai while working and he graduated 8 years later.

• After graduating, Daya Nayak started working with a plumber as a supervisor and started earning a monthly salary of Rs. 3,000.

• In 1995, Daya Nayak joined the Mumbai Police Force as a trainee.

• After completing his training, Daya was posted to the Juhu police station in 1996.

• Daya Nayak was assigned to monitor the Juhu jurisdiction on the night of 31 December 1996 and he was informed by one of his informers that two members of the Chhota Rajan gang were going to be in the Juhu area of Mumbai. Daya went there to arrest them but Chhota Rajan’s gang members started firing at the police and in retaliation, Daya Nayak shot them dead. That was Daya’s first encounter.

• After the encounter, Daya Nayak was shifted to the special squad working against the gangsters.

• In 1997, Daya was hospitalised after being shot twice and was badly wounded by a gangster.

• Daya Nayak built a school in his native village Yennehole and the money to build the school was collected through donations from Bollywood personalities in the name of the Radha Nayak Educational Trust which was named after Daya Nayak’s mother.

• Nayak raised Rs 1 crore to construct the school and many famous Bollywood actors including Amitabh Bachchan, Suniel Shetty, and Salman Khan donated money for the same.

• In 2000, Amitabh Bachchan inaugurated the school in the presence of many famous personalities like Suniel Shetty and Aftab Shivdasani.

• The school was later handed over to the Government of Karnataka which is known as the Radha Nayak Government High School. The school offers free education to the students belonging to the rural areas.

• In 2004, the Hindi crime drama film titled ‘Ab Tak Chhappan’ was based on Daya Nayak’s life in which Nana Patekar played the character of Sadhu Agashe which was a character based on Daya Nayak.

  

• In 2005, the Kannada crime drama film titled ‘Encounter Dayanayak Kannada’ was based on Daya Nayak’s life.

• In 2006, both his parents passed away when Daya Nayak was arrested for false claims of owning illegal wealth worth crores. He was also suspended from his post in the Maharashtra Police and was under suspension for nearly six-and-a-half years.

• In 2010, the Mumbai High Court finished off all the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act MCOCA charges against Daya Nayak.

• In the same year, a Telugu crime drama film titled ‘Golimaar’ was released which was based on Daya Nayak.

• On 16 June 2012, the Maharashtra Police re-appointed Daya Nayak and he was posted in the Local Arms unit. He was then posted to the Western Zone and worked out of Bandra, Mumbai.

• The 2012 Hindi action film titled ‘Department’ which highlighted the encounter specialists of the Mumbai Police. In the film, Daya Nayak’s role was played by Sanjay Dutt.

• In 2013, Daya Nayak took into custody a 26-year-old tailor from Goregaon and his 24-year-old wife for selling off the woman’s 12-year-old sister for Rs. 70,000 in D N Nagar.

• In the early 2000s, at Dadar’s busy flower market in Mumbai during peak hours, Daya Nayak was injured and hospitalised for 17 days after getting into an encounter and he shot 3 terrorists. The terrorists threw a bomb at Daya Nayak and he suffered minor injuries.

• In 2014, Daya Nayak was transferred to Nagpur. He did not report on duty in Nagpur which is why he was suspended from duty in July 2015.

• Daya’s transfer orders were cancelled in August 2015, and he was invited back to the post in Mumbai Police on 11 January 2016. Daya Nayak also got promoted to the post of senior police inspector in 2023.

• Daya Nayak has done 83 encounters and has arrested more than 300 criminals, as of 2024.