With gangs operating from jails, this can only be a momentary lull

NEW DELHI: After the arrest of Nafe alias Mantri, the Delhi Police can finally breathe a sigh of relief. With major gangsters involved in the bloody gang wars which had plagued the villages of Najafgarh behind bars, the gang wars may finally stop.

However, this can be only a momentary blessing of peace as the jailed gangsters are now believed to be running their operations form within the confines of the jails.

The jailed gangsters had taken the refuge of the jail to take the heat off them after they had murdered several of their rivals.

A case in point is the surrender of gangster Manjeet Mahal, who had surrendered to the Special Cell in a bid to facilitate his wife contest the MCD polls as Millennium Post reported by the in January.

The gangsters have now turned into financiers operating from the shadows. “They have recruited young people all in their teens to do their bidding. In some cases, we have also found juveniles being used. In Manjeet Mahal’s father’s killing, they had used a juvenile to execute the crime,” said Deputy Commissioner of Police (Special Cell), Sanjeev Kumar Yadav.

Many of these youth are recruited from their native villages in Dichao and Mitraon, and in a recent trend, young men from Western Uttar Pradesh are being recruited.

However, the reason why many of the gangsters had to choose to surrender than stay in the spotlight was the string of murders involving close relatives of these gangsters.

Nafe, a trigger-happy individual described as a hot head since his school days, was roped into his mentor Manjeet Mahal’s gang after he met him through his cable business.

After becoming a gangster, he and Manjeet had witnessed the gang war between the Bharat Singh/krishan Pehelwan and Udaiveer group, which culminated in the murder of Bharat Singh and Udaiveer.

However, Nafe and Mahal had their plate full as they had a fullblown gang war with the Jyoti Baba/kapil Nandu gang. One of Mahal’s associates, Dinesh was murdered by the Vikas Lagapuria gang after he had threatened the latter’s father. This infuriated Mahal to no end. Nafe also had his hands full as he had taken money from Surajbhan.

Nafe had reasons to believe that Surajbhan was sending men to his house to recover his money. Nafe later set up a meeting with Surajbhan to confirm the same.

However, they could not believe their luck when Vikas Lagapuriya’s brother-in-law Sunil alias Doctor turned up at the meeting he wanted to mediate. Without wasting any time, Nafe and Mahal killed Sunil which spiralled into a full-blown gang war.

In that very night, Mahal’s family was targeted, and his father was killed in the firing. His children were spared due to their age. Suspecting that he was ratted out by an associate Bijender, he along with his shooters pumped 54 bullets into his body.

The string of murders then continued until Mahal’s father was shot dead and in reprisal two members of Kapil’s gang were eliminated.