Delhi Police claimed to have arrested a shooter off the Lawrence Bishnoi-Kala Jathedi gang on Sunday. The police said that the shooter was arrested from the Najafgarh-Kapashera road in Delhi. The police in a raid arrested Arun Rana alias Dhillu after a scuffle from the Najafgarh-Kapashera main road, opposite Chopra Farms in Bamnoli, along with a pistol and five cartridges, he said, adding that Rana is a resident of Gurugram in Haryana.
Rana was the brain along with Naresh Sethi and Sachin Deshwal alias Bhanja behind helping their gang's leader Sandeep Jhanjharia alias Kala Jathedi escape from the Haryana Police's custody on February 1, 2020, police said. They said according to the plan, first, Sethi escaped from the custody of the Haryana Police on December 30, 2019 from the Safdarjung Hospital. Thereafter, they purchased over 20 pistols, a pipe gun and three vehicles for Jathedi escape, police said.
On February 1, 2020, Deshwal and Sethi got information from Bhondsi Jail in Gurgaon that Jathedi will be taken to a Faridabad court along with four other criminals, they said. They deployed their associates in the court to keep a tab on Jathedi's movement. When the police van carrying him left the court for Bhondsi jail, Sethi, along with his 11 associates, positioned themselves on the Faridabad-Gurugram road near Gawal Pahari Hanuman Temple in Faridabad in three vehicles, police said.
They said around 3 pm, they stopped the jail van and started firing indiscriminately. In an ensuing gunfight, Sethi and Kapil suffered bullet injuries, and the person in-charge of the jail van was also injured, police said, adding that they, however, escaped along with Kala Jathedi and another criminal Dhan Singh. Om Prakash and Deshwal had arranged for Rana's stay in Delhi and Haryana. After seven months, Rana was arrested by the Dwarka district police, they said.
In February, Rana was granted bail by the Punjab and Haryana High Court in the Faridabad case on the ground that he had to care for his ailing father. He started living with Prakash and extorted money from businessmen to fund the gang, they said. In February and March 2022, jailed gangster Deshwal directed Rana and Prakash to expand gang's activities in Delhi-NCR, police said.
They used to share details and mobile phone numbers of businessmen of Delhi-NCR with Deshwal and as per his directions, targeted and extorted money from them, police said. In March, they provided information about several businessmen, including that of a realtor from Mohan Garden in Delhi's Uttam Nagar, to Deshwal, they said.
Two shooters from Rajasthan and three from Delhi and Haryana were arranged to threaten the Uttam Nagar-based realtor, police said.
On March 30, these shooters fired at the realtor at his office in the Mohan Garden area, injuring him, they said, adding that as per Deshwal's orders, the shooters were harboured by Rana in Bajghera in Gurugram. Prakash, Rana and others, on his direction, also collected "protection money" from businessmen in Delhi-NCR, a source in the police said.
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