Orchestrating criminal activities with associates both in India and abroad, intentions to carry out terrorist activities including targeted killings of prominent persons, procuring firearms and explosives from across the borders, and raising funds for terrorist activities through extortion, criminal intimidation, smuggling narcotics, and illegal weapons – these are the basis on which the Delhi Police, for the first time, have slapped the stringent Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) against the city’s most infamous gangsters.
The FIR registered by the Delhi Police further mentions that the funds generated illegally are “being used to finance the terror activities” and that these gangsters are “carrying out such criminal activities from jail”. It also adds that those who continue to remain absconding, operate from different parts of India and “foreign countries including Canada, Pakistan, Malaysia, Australia and UAE”.
But who are the gangsters who have faced flak and how do they run their crime syndicates in the national capital? CNN-News18 takes a deep dive into the organisational setup of these outlaws to decode the functioning of the gangs of Delhi.
DELHI PRISONS – ‘HEADQUARTERS’ OF CAPITAL CRIME
Most of the big names mentioned in the FIR, lodged by the Special Cell – Delhi Police’s anti-terror unit– are currently in jail. Be it Lawrence Bishnoi, who gained prominence for allegedly orchestrating Punjab singer Siddhu Moose Wala’s killing and threatening Salman Khan for shooting blackbuck, his close aide Sandeep aka Kala Jathedi, who had earlier escaped police custody, their arch-rival Neeraj Bawana involved multiple cases of murders, attempts to murder, extortion and illegal possession of arms, or his associate Sunil alias Tillu Tajpuria, who had allegedly got executed the brazen gunning down of Delhi’s most-wanted gangster Jitender Gogi inside a courtroom: all are serving life terms in Delhi prisons.
Senior police officers CNN-News18 spoke to said that over time it has been established that Delhi prisons have become dens for these gangsters running their crime syndicates from inside. “The biggest factor is that they feel safe inside jails. Phones, drugs, and money have time and again been recovered from inmates. On many occasions, the connivance of jail administrations has also surfaced wherein they were caught sneaking in cellphones. To send in an android phone which costs Rs 10,000 to 12,000, these gangsters pay anything between Rs 50,000 to a lakh,” said the officers, requesting anonymity.
Decoding how an extortion call is made from inside the jail, an officer said gangsters use cellphones to connect with their associates outside the jail, who then either take the target on a conference call or on speaker phone. “Many times it has been noticed that an associate sitting abroad becomes the connector or Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology is used to blanket the call location. Once the target is threatened to pay the extortion amount, often referred to as protection money, the henchmen of these gangsters then shoot at the targets or at their houses or shops to flare up the fear psychosis until the payment is made,” the officer said.
In connection with Siddhu Moose Wala’s murder, when the Delhi Police had questioned Lawrence Bishnoi who was then lodged in Tihar Jail, it had surfaced that the entire crime plot was orchestrated by him and Goldy Brar, who is believed to be in Canada, over the phone.
Even in the Sukesh Chandrashekhar scam case, it had come to the fore how the alleged conman was making calls from inside Rohini jail, posing as senior bureaucrats from the law and home ministries, to extort the sum of Rs 215 crore from another inmate’s wife on the pretext of getting him bail.
THE MONEY DIVIDE
Gang wars in Delhi date back to the late 1980s when it all started over a land dispute between Kishan Pehalwan of Dichaon Kalan village and two brothers Anoop and Balraj of Mitraon village. The feud between the two families claimed several lives over the next decade, and gradually as the two groups further fragmented into smaller gangs, the game got nastier.
Over the next decade in the late 1990s and early noughties, as the gun battles continued, many of these gang members were either shot dead, were eliminated in police encounters, quit the crime world, or were jailed for life. Gangs got smaller and saw the rise of new leaders who explored new sources of income.
“In the early 1990s, collecting money from tender mafias, controlling liquor, cable, and water contracts, operating satta gangs, and making money from disputed properties were the sources of income for these gangsters. Over time, as cable, liquor, and water contracts became obsolete, tenders were made online, the gangsters started depending on extortion in the name of taking protection money, controlling toll plazas in the NCR, and collecting money from illegal clubs and dance bars,” said a senior police officer.
Other than dominance and revenge killings, controlling sources of money has been the only reason behind these gangs clashing with each other from time to time, the officer said.
THE FOREIGN CONNECT
However, what has caught the attention of the security agencies of late, are the weapons and funds reaching these gangsters from foreign lands. Be it the recent Moose Wala killing or the firing of an RPG at Punjab police’s intelligence wing headquarters in Mohali, in both the cases which are also being probed by the Delhi Police’s special cell, the investigation so far has hinted that the weapons and logistics were arranged from Pakistan.
Goldy Brar, against whom the police have also slapped UAPA, is believed to be in Canada and is said to have arranged for logistics in Moose Wala’s killing.
The police FIR also mentions that some of the associates of jailed gangsters “are absconding and operating from different parts of India and foreign countries including but not limited to Canada, Pakistan, Malaysia, Australia and UAE”.
“Time and again, when Delhi Police have busted gun suppliers in Delhi-NCR, semi-automatic .32-calibre pistols, Turkish and Brazil-made guns, and Glocks have been recovered, which seem to have replaced the traditional double barrels, shotguns, and country-made pistols over the years. When sources of these weapons were tapped, it was established in many cases that they came from cross-border areas,” said another officer, requesting anonymity.
The officer said with weapons and funds coming in from across the border, there are apprehensions that these gangsters may be involved in target killings at the behest of those sitting across the border, smuggling of drugs or gold, for generating funds, or joining hands with their contacts across the border to execute revenge killings. “It is also feared that they may act as hawala operators for their cross-border contacts to earn money. Over time, evidences that have only strengthened these apprehensions are also believed to have built the grounds for the UAPA being invoked against these gangsters,” the officer added.
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