‘25 dons, close aides put behind bars in 4 years’

LUCKNOW : As many as 25 mafia dons and their close aides were put behind bars and their assets worth ₹1,000 crore bulldozed and seized since March 2017, said senior home and police department officials here on Thursday.

At least 190 firearms licenses belonging to gangsters, their families and aides had been revoked during this period, they said.

A senior home department official said not only dreaded gangsters like Mukhtar Ansari and Atiq Ahmed, but others with criminal antecedents were also hunted down by the police since the formation of the Yogi Adiyanath-led Bharatiya Janata Party government in Uttar Pradesh.

The last four years saw many criminal gangs in the state being dissolved as the police made strong chargesheets against them in courts.

“For example, the court sentenced dreaded gangster Akash Jat to three and seven years’ imprisonment in two cases while his aide Amit Bhura got jail term for three years and one year in the same cases,” he emphasised.

A senior police official said gangster-turned-politician

Mukhtar Ansari was lodged in Banda Jail, while Atiq Ahmed was in Central Jail in Sabarmati, Gujarat and Brijesh Kumar Singh alias Arun Kumar Singh, was lodged in Varanasi Jail while gangster Om Prakash alias Babloo Srivastav was in Bareilly jail.

Other dreaded criminals like Munir were lodged in Mandoli Jail, Delhi; Khan Mubarak in Hardoi Jail; Amit Kasana in a Delhi jail; Akash Jat in Ghaziabad Jail; Uddham Singh in Azamgarh Jail; Yogesh Bhadaur in Siddharthnagar Jail; Ajit alias Happu in Bareilly Jail, Sushil alias Moonch in Kanpur Jail and Sanjiv Maheshwari alias Jeeva in Lucknow Jail, he added.

He said other gangsters on the list were Sundar Bhati alias Netaji lodged in Hamirpur jail of Kasna; Anil Dujana alias Anil Nagar in Gautam Buddh Nagar jail; Singhraj Bhati in Gorakhpur jail; Ankit Gurjar in Maharajganj jail; Subhash Singh Thakur in Fatehpur jail; Dhruv Kumar Singh alias Kuntu Singh in Ballia jail; Umesh Rai alias Gaura Rai in Rampur Jail; Tribhuvan Singh alias Pawan Kumar in Mirzapur Jail and three criminal brothers Mohammad Salim and Mohammed Sohrab and Mohammad Rustom were lodged in Fatehgarh and Kanpur

jails.

The official said the Uttar Pradesh police seized immovable and illegal assets worth over ₹1,000 crore from the 25 arrested gangsters.

The state government was also realizing expenses for demolition and evacuation of properties from the gangsters.

The state government also tightened the noose around those running illegal slaughterhouses and demolished many such abattoirs.

There was a crackdown on gangs involved in parking collection rackets, illegal fish trade, illegal coal business and land mafia.