Delhi’s most wanted and elusive gangster Neeraj Sehrawat, alias Neeraj Bawana has been arrested along with his associate by the Special Cell after exchange of fire at West Delhi’s Mundka area during the wee hours of Tuesday.
Bawana, who had let loose a reign of terror in the Outer Delhi and Haryana, carried a bounty of Rs1 lakh on his head and was wanted in over 40 cases of murder, attempt to murder and extortion in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab and Uttarakhand.
Bawana was a ‘ghostly figure’ for police as neither he nor those around him used mobile phones to avoid tracking. He used internet-based communication system and camouflaged his location. He was arrested several times earlier, including in 2012 when he had demanded Rs50 lakh from Satinder, the then MlA from Narela constituency. He had jumped parole in 2013. “Neeraj Bawana was arrested in the early hours after a brief encounter with a team of Special Cell at main Rohtak Road near Mundka at around 3.34 am, when he was going to meet his family at Bawana in Haryana,” said Commissioner of Police (Special Cell) SN Srivastava. Bawana was in a Hyundai Verna car along with Rashid Khan, alias Guddu, who was also arrested.
Bawana had become an enigma for police as he was giving them a slip though around 35 of his gang members were caught. Police said he was roaming all over North, Central and Western India, setting up bases in the last one-and-half years.
One Smith & Wesson Springfield pistol which costs around Rs4 lakh and another pistol with ‘US-made’ engraving were recovered from the duo along with live and spent cartridges. Bawana claimed the top spot of Delhi’s mafia after his friend-turned foe Neetu Daboda, the then reigning don of Delhi, was killed in an encounter by the Delhi Police on October 26, 2013. He jumped parole after Daboda’s death.
“Bawana was much ahead of Daboda in terms of cunningness and realised that instead of taking on the police directly, he took help of his (maternal) uncle who is a politician. Bawana spent huge amount of money earned illegally by him and his syndicate to build electoral fortune of his uncle,” said Srivastava.
Former Mundka MlA Rambir Shaukeen is Bawana’s maternal uncle. Shaukeen’s house was raided by the Delhi Police in March last year over suspicion that some criminals were hiding at his place. Nine members of Bawana gang were arrested on February 6, a day before the Delhi Assembly polls, for allegedly exercising muscle power in favour of Reetav Shokeen, wife of Rambir. Sources said that the ex-MlA was under the police lens for providing shelter to the fugitive and also having supplied him with logistics.
While Daboda was killed, his successor Paras, alias Goldy and another gangster Rajesh, alias Karambeer were arrested. Bawana’s gang seized the opportunity to establish itself as the most dreaded outfit operating a syndicate of extortion and contract killings.
Recently, he had coordinated the escape of Amit, alias Bhura — carrying a reward of Rs12 lakh on his arrest — from the custody of Uttarakhand Police, while he was being produced at Baghpat challenging police forces of Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi.
“Our teams tasked to track this don interrogated scores of victims, associates, arrestees and sympathisers and realised over a period of time that Neeraj was, to almost all of them, an ‘enigma’ — a ‘ghostly’ figure,” said DCP (Special Cell) Sanjeev Kumar Yadav.
The sustained efforts revealed that Delhi, Meerut, Ranchi, Kolkata, Agra, Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Silvassa, Diu, Udaipur, Chandigarh, Rohtak etc. were the places where the don was passing through, he said. At no place was he was found in touch with his known contacts, which made the task even onerous.
“Various teams kept picking up vital clues to come to some sort of understanding of what was going on in his mind. This led to the discovery of a fully furnished rented flat taken by the don in Kolkata’s Park Street, his contacts with various realtors and taxi operators in other cities and information platforms,” said Yadav.