Rapping the GANGSTA
By Maxwell Pereira

Has the spectre of gangsterism and hired killings lifted its head once again in the Capital, as is being speculated in the aftermath of the Personal Point triple-murder?
It may sound odd, especially since the Delhi Police has prided itself over its success in keeping the ‘mafia’ out of the city. So, let me explain. When one talks of crime and criminals in a city, what comes to mind invariably is the ‘underworld’, thanks to the influence of Hollywood blockbusters. And unlike in Bombay, there’s no activity that fits the term ‘underworld’ or ‘organised crime’ in Delhi.
Not that the kingpins of organized crime haven’t made attempts to make inroads into Delhi. You may recall the arrest in 1993 of five notorious criminals belonging to the Dawood Ibrahim gang. These arrests made by the Delhi Police were widely acclaimed and we’re still experiencing their fallout – for instance, it’s not been long since we witnessed high drama over the arrest of a former union minister on charges of harbouring some of these very gangsters.
The Delhi Police, in fact, has thwarted several such attempts by gangsters – like Bombay’s Vinod Bikramaiah and Sunil – to penetrate the Capital. Police investigations revealed their designs to seek an alliance with the criminal gangs of Delhi and western Uttar Pradesh to take root and strike terror in northern India.
This was when gangsters in western U.P. were taking advantage of the fact that Delhi’s borders have always been notional; the Capital’s faceless society, moreover, offers a perfect haven for criminals seeking anonymity. As a result, instances of these criminals extorting ‘protection money’ from businessmen on both sides of the Delhi- UP border were no longer a rarity. And within Delhi, there were others who discovered a lucrative career in forcibly evicting lenants and grabbing expensive plots of land under dispute.
It was only a matter of time before this reservoir of muscle power graduated into the arena of kidnappings for ransom. Even when the accused were caught, the investigation and prosecution of these cases posed a problem because hardly any evidence was forthcoming, with neither the victims nor the potential witnesses cooperating with the police. It was clear that the moneyed class was not only in the grip of a fear psychosis, but also was becoming increasingly cynical about the police machinery’s ability to contain the crime graph.
Having served in the Delhi Police during those ominous years, I witnessed both the seamy and the bright side, the latter being the force’s determination to contain the menace. Detecting the malady even as it was taking root and spreading slowly but steadily, and sensing in its early stages the future possibilities, the Delhi Police spent considerable time researching the trends, identifying the gangs, and planning suitable strategies to control these criminals.
As a first step, to improve surveillance over known criminals, the professional efficiency of Delhi’s policemen was sought to be increased by streamlining the process of maintaining police station records. Then, steps were taken to ensure prompt, impartial and professional investigation of cases, without, of course, ignoring the demands of preventive policing.
A special drive was started to battle the threat from gangs operating on the Delhi-UP border, with a determined effort to exterminate them. Special teams were formed in all the nine police districts of Delhi, and in the Crime Branch, to begin the crackdown on identified gangs. And recognizing the sensitive nature of the cases, the Crime Branch Special Cell handpicked investigating officers and put them through intensive training.
The efforts yielded results, with more than 50-odd important gang members falling into the police net in a span of less than a year. Thanks to the coordinated efforts of the Delhi and Ghaziabad police forces, major gangsters were either arrested or eliminated in encounters, and they included Mohinder Fauzi, Tejpal, Satbir Gujjar, Gopal Thakur, Narinder alias Babu Tyagi, Naresh alias Nasso, Brij Mohan Tyagi.
The crowning moment came last year with the daylight encounter in Mehrauli on March 28 that accounted for the dreaded Rajbir Ramala; it was followed by more action, this time in Faridabad on July 20, when Ram Pal Gujjar was ‘done’ in, both in daring operations executed by Delhi’s West District Police team personally led by the DCP. Naturally, today, the Delhi Police has reasons to be confident that the final nail has been driven into the coffin of gangsterism.
Even so, there are bound to be the small-time operators like Ravi Prakash and Pinki – their names figure among those accused of the Personal Point murders – who are aspiring to graduate big time, with no dearth of unscrupulous people ever ready to hire them to do their dirty work. There’s no room for lowering our vigil.

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Published in The Indian Express on 29.6.1996 Better Living /Crime Beat Column