JOIN USBunty-Babli, Mama-Bhanja were among the gangs which operated in the capital
Delhi, sometimes called the country's crime capital, attracts unwanted attention by gangs from neighbouring states. Among them have been groups like Bijnori gang, Bunty-Babli gang, Mama-Bhanja gang and Raju Hakla gang.
Among the most notorious was the Bunty-Babli gang of Moni Singh and Mohammad Naushad. Moni, the ‘Babli’ of the gang, came from a well-off family in Kanpur and had a double MA in Hindi and Sanskrit. But she was wanted in 28 cases of theft in AC coaches in trains. Along with Naushad, she had stolen goods worth Rs 14 lakh.
Moni had been dumped by her husband and was determined not to return to her father’s house without becoming financially independent, while Naushad needed money to treat his sick wife.
“They travelled on trains that left the capital late in the evening and stole valuables from passengers’ bags after midnight,” says a police officer. As a rule, they never got off the train after a heist to remain above suspicion.
They had taken trains to Jammu, Ratlam, Chakki Bank, Jaipur, Agra and Bhopal. Their stint came to an end when they were arrested at New Delhi railway station on the basis of a complaint from a passenger on Pooja Express.
The Mama-Bhanja gang of Mohar Singh, 33, and Amrik Singh, 31, who hail fromRajasthan’s Alwar district, was also active in the capital before the duo was arrested last year. Mohar, a truck mechanic by profession, had taken to crime by stealing motorcycles in 2010 and selling them for Rs 5,000 to 10,000.
But disappointed with the money involved, he decided to target trucks. Amrik, a school dropout, joined his maternal uncle and started utilising his skills of making duplicate keys.
Mohar and Amrik used to target trucks parked in industrial areas. For this, Amrik carried master keys and tools. The stolen trucks were sold to their contacts for between Rs 2 lakh and Rs 5 lakh, depending on their condition.
Cricket betting
The ongoing Indian Premier League cricket tournament has also been a major attraction for criminals from neighbouring states to make quick money in the capital through betting.
Several betting syndicates have been busted in the past one month in which youths from Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Punjab have been found involved.
On April 30, four persons including the kingpin — a mechanical engineer — were arrested while operating during a match between Sunrisers Hyderabad and Mumbai Indians in outer Delhi’s Rohini. “The accused were accepting bets in person as well as through mobile phones. They were also providing telephone to several other bookies,” says Ravindra Yadav, Additional Commissioner of Police (Crime).
The betting amount on the match till the times of the raid was Rs 25 lakh and the gang had accepted about Rs 1 crore in the season.
“The accused were earlier operating from Haryana’s Sonipat district, but as local police were suspicious about their activities, they decided to shift to Rohini,” Yadav adds. They were running the racket from a rented house to keep their activities unnoticed.