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Thailand considering Rajan
extradition request: AFP

"We have received the request, which says that the suspect is wanted for 17 criminal charges" in India, a Thai foreign ministry official said in Bangkok.

Thailand is considering the request, but as the two countries do not have a formal extradition treaty, it was not known how long it would take to process.

"We will have to co-ordinate with many state agencies such as the attorney general, the police and the Indian embassy," another official told AFP.

The Indian government earlier this month revoked Rajan's passport as his travel documents were not in order and he is under provisional arrest in Bangkok.

Indian foreign ministry spokesman R S Jassal has said that his government was doing "everything in its power" to get Rajan to stand trial in an Indian court.

A police team from Rajan's home town of Bombay is already in Bangkok, working on facilitating the extradition process.

The visiting Indian detectives are hoping to haul him back to India to face trial on 17 counts of murder and other mob-related charges.

The saga began when Rajan was wounded last month by gunmen who burst into a Bangkok apartment and killed his associate Rohit Verma in what appeared to be a shooting ordered by Dubai-based Dawood Ibrahim, a sworn enemy of Rajan.

Three Pakistani men were among those arrested for the shooting.

Rajan was once Ibrahim's right-hand man in the Bombay underworld but a series of bomb blasts in the city in 1993 which killed 300 people led to the two becoming sworn enemies, divided along religious lines.

Rajan is a staunch Hindu and Ibrahim, India's most-wanted gangster, a devout Muslim. The gangs have since taken their violent rivalry across Asia.

Rajan, who reached Bangkok earlier this year after fleeing to Dubai in 1988, is believed to control a crime empire extending from extortion rackets and drug trafficking to film financing. Police in Bombay say Ibrahim too wields enormous clout in the city's underworld and his men in India control a crime empire worth billions of rupees.

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