Abu Salem aide Reenu, accused in cases of murder and extortion, arrested in Delhi

New Delhi: A suspected aide of gangster Abu Salem wanted in several cases, including murder, attempt to murder and extortion, was arrested from east Delhi on Friday, police said.

Jaan Usman Khan alias Reenu, who is in his 30s and has a long list of arrests in Delhi and Mumbai, was nabbed on Friday night from an area near Sanjay Jheel, said deputy commissioner of police (East) Omvir Singh.

Khan, who along with his two associates, allegedly shot at his wife in Janakpuri on 3 June, and was once previously arrested by the Mumbai police on charges of firing at actress Raveena Tandon’s husband Anil Thadani.

The police also recovered an improvised pistol, that he used for shooting at his wife, and two live cartridges from him.

Police said that he was angry at his wife for “disappearing” for a week without informing him. She has been traced now.

After trying to kill his wife, he fled to Nepal for getting help from gangster friend Chakre Milan. But as Milan was arrested in May 2017 and the Nepal police was cracking down on his gang, Khan returned to Delhi.

Khan is an aide of gangster Abu Salem, who is currently lodged in Taloja Central Jail in Raigad, and was found guilty by a TADA court on Friday for transporting weapons from Gujarat to Mumbai ahead of the 1993 serial blasts.

Police said Khan has phone numbers of Bollywood bigwigs on his mobile phone and was in touch with his underworld contacts in Mumbai.

Tracing Khan’s links with the Salem gang, a police official said he had gone to Mumbai in 1996 where he met Waseem, a sharpshooter of the gang accused of killing T-Series owner and film producer Gulshan Kumar. Waseem introduced Khan to Salem and he joined his gang, police said. Salem later introduced him to Aftab Bhatki, who was running a fake Indian currency notes (FICN) racket from Dubai and Karachi. Khan joined the gang and began circulating FICN in India through Nepal and Bangladesh routes, but was arrested in Delhi in an FICN case in 2000.

After being released, he moved to Mumbai and started extorting money from people in Bollywood on Salem’s directions. But he was arrested for an extortion bid on Thadani. Salem was later arrested in this case in 2006.

Khan had earlier also fired at singer Daler Mehndi and film producer Rakesh Roshan on Salem’s directions for extorting protection money, police said.

After his release from Mumbai jail, Khan came to Delhi and in 2010 was again arrested from Kalyanpuri under the Arms Act for carrying illicit arms. He was also arrested in a case of murder of a businessman in Vikaspuri. He along with Vinod Pandit had allegedly fired at financier Hemant Birje.

After getting bail in the cases, he never appeared in the courts to face trial and was declared a proclaimed offender in three cases and was arrested in 2015 in Delhi. In 2015, he was also contacted by the underworld for killing Chhota Rajan, who is currently lodged in Tihar Jail. However, the plan could not materialise since Rajan is lodged in a high-security jail.

In 2016, he along with his associates went to Mumbai and threatened director and choregrapher Remo D’Souza and his brother-in-law on a dispute with a leading film producer, sources said.

Though the producer got a case registered against the choreographer in Uttar Pradesh, no complaint was made by the latter. Earlier this month, Delhi police’s special cell arrested an aide of fugitive don Dawood Ibrahim’s confidant Chhota Shakeel, who was allegedly planning to kill Pakistan-born Canadian writer Tarek Fatah and had already received Rs 1.5 lakh for it.