From Punjab to Bihar, 10 of Bishnoi-brar gang held in Delhi Police’s nationwide crackdown

DELHI, PUNJAB, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar: In a nationwide crackdown, the Delhi Police have arrested nine members of a gang run by gangsters Goldy Brar and Lawrence Bishnoi from seven states, officials said. They have also apprehended a minor, they added.

With this, they have averted contract killings and other heinous crimes being planned in Delhi and other states, Delhi Police said.

Brar, a designated terrorist, is believed to be in Canada, while his partner bi sh no i is serving time at Sabarmati jail in Ahmedabad, Gujarat.

A police officer said the arrested men were planning revenge killings on members of the rival Tillu Tajpuria gang in Delhi and Rajasthan, adding they were in touch with Brar and Bishnoi. A case in this regard was registered at Special Cell on April 24.

A senior officer told The Indian

Express that the operation was planned after police received a tip-off that one of the arrested men, Manjeet, was “in constant touch with Brar through

Telegram and Signal, and they were planning something big in Delhi”.

The arrests

The first arrests, police said, was made in New Delhi on April 27. Jaspreet Singh alias Rahul, 25, was arrested near Shastri Park Pusta while Dharmendra alias

Kartik was nabbed near Hazrat Nizamuddin Railway Station. On the same day, another team arrested 22-year-old Abhay Soni alias Kartik alias Kabir in Jaipur. Simultaneously, teams nabbed Sachin Kumar alias Rahul, 26, from Lucknow along with a minor. In another raid, on April 27, 20-year-old Santosh alias Sultan Baba was arrested in Ratlam, MP.

On April 30, Manjeet was arrested in Sonipat, Haryana. In Punjab, Gurpal Singh, 26, and Manjeet Singh Guri, 22, of Mohali were also arrested the same day. The last arrest was made during a raid in Vaishali, Bihar, where Santosh Kumar, 27, was arrested on May 2. Pistols with live cartridges were recovered in almost all the arrests, police said.

The police officer quoted above said the arrested persons were planning revenge killings on the Tillu gang. “Brar would direct them,” the officer said, adding their plans came to light after police intercepted their chats. “During questioning, they revealed they were going to be provided with the name of the person to be killed a day before... it was all going to happen within a few weeks.”

According to a statement by the Special Cell on Wednesday, all the arrested gang members were “connected with each other through Facebook, Instagram, and other encrypted chat platforms”.

A high-level team of Special Cell led by ACP Lalit Mohan Negi and ACP Hridya Bhushan along with Inspectors Shiv Kumar and Satish Rana “started surveillance on the gang members” before finally cracking this network.

DCP (Special Cell) Pratiksha Godara, who supervised the operation, told The Indian Express: “Members of this criminal gang have been involved in heinous offences in Delhi and other states.”

A senior police officer said that such gang members do not know each other and are simply asked to go to a location and execute the task. “Once they commit a crime, they exchange numbers and in this case too, all the accused had one common link – conversations with Brar, who was, in turn, in touch with Bishnoi inside jail,” he said.