Rivals shoot man in Malviya Nagar in alleged ‘gang war’
NEWDELHI: On the stormy Sunday evening, the busy Malviya Nagar market in south Delhi was rattled when two men on a bike rained bullets on a criminal, leaving him almost dead. The spot is less than 150 metres from a police booth.
Soon, a posse of police took over the market. Within hours, following intensive raids and surveillance, police teams managed to nab one of the shooters, while the other remained on the run, a senior officer said.
The officer said as per preliminary probe, Iqbal Qureshi, 35, is a wanted criminal and works for the gang of Prince Teotia. The men who attacked him belongs to the rival Rohit Chaudhary gang.
Deputy commissioner of police (south) Romil Baaniya, however, denied that it was a gang war.
According to senior police officers, the accused, Anuj Gulia, had been arrested in 2015 in a kidnapping case. A police team nabbed Gulia from near a park in Chirag Dilli and recovered a pistol from him.
Talking to HT, Qureshi, who is receiving treatment at a hospital in Saket, said, “I was sitting in my meat shop in the main market when suddenly two men rained bullets on me. I have iden- tified them as Chaudhary’s men. They shot me five times.”
Arun, who was accompanying Qureshi at the time of incident, said that he had gone to an ATM, when he heard gun shots. When he rushed back, he found Qureshi bleeding and rushed him to hospital. “He is now out of danger,” he told reporters.
“Interrogations revealed that Gulia had sought help from Aas Mohammad alias Ashu, a wanted criminal, to kill Qureshi. Aashu, a resident of Sangam Vihar, is wanted in many criminal cases. He was arrested in January from Ghaziabad in an extortion case,” the police officer said.
Baaniya said around 9.09pm, a call was received that some people have shot at a man near shop number six in the main Malviya Nagar market.
“A team that was rushed to the spot, found that the injured, identified as Iqbal Qureshi, has received four gunshot injuries. He was rushed to the AIIMS trauma centre. He has sustained bullet injuries on the left leg, right hand and in abdomen,” the DCP said.
“One accused, Anuj Gulia, was held and a weapon was recovered from him. His associate has been identified as Ashu and six teams have been formed to trace him. Motive behind the attack is personal enmity,” the officer said.
A senior police officer, who did not wish to be named, said that Chaudhary and Teotia worked together until both of them were jailed in 2015 in a murder case reported in Lado Sarai, with 13 others.
“Both of them then started operating from jail and ran rackets to extort money from builders in south Delhi. Later, Chaudhary and Teotia formed different gangs. While Chaudhary was released from Tihar about two months ago, Teotia is lodged in Mandoli jail,” the officer said.