Wanted gangster nabbed from Dwarka

The Delhi Police on Sunday claimed to have busted a gang of extortionists with the arrest of its “kingpin” from sector 16-B of south-west Delhi’s Dwarka area.Vikas Gulia alias lagarpuria (25) was arrested on Saturday, police said, adding that an English pistol and four live cartridges were recovered from his possession.

“We received information that lagarpuria will arrive at the aforesaid area to meet someone in the evening. Accordingly, we laid a trap. On his arrival, our men stopped him there. Sensing himself being cornered by cops, lagarpuria made an attempt to escape and whipped out a loaded pistol aiming at our team. But before he could fire, our men overpowered him,” DCP South West district, RA Sanjeev said.

On April 13, two cases of extortion were registered against the gang at police stations Baba Haridas Nagar and Chawla. In one of the cases, the gang members, unidentified then, had allegedly demanded Rs 25 lakh “protection money” from the complainant — Sanjay Kumar.The complainant had claimed that the members had opened fired at his shop Aggarwal Sweets in Najafgarh area on his refusal to pay the money. Also, in 2012, he allegedly mounted an attack on Bharat Singh, former legislator from Najafgarh. His men had barged in Singh’s office and shot him. lagarpuria was earlier arrested from Najafgarh area in 2013 for extorting money from a builder. He was later released on bail. Since then, he was on the run and was declared a proclaimed offender by the City court.

lagarpuria’s associates in the two incidents — Vikas alias PK, Vineet alias Johny and Pawan Gulia — had been arrested by the sleuths two months ago. 

“In view of gravity of the crime, we formed a dedicated team of personnel and launched search with deft technological penetration and secret information network to arrest the gangster, who was hiding at his hideouts in Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana etc,” he said.

The “most-wanted” accused, native of lagarpur village in Haryana, was head of a gang which was involved in crimes like murder, attempt to murder, robbery, extortion, the DCP said.The gang, which has “many” sharp shooters, also possessed sophisticated automatic weapons, he added. 

A college dropout, lagarpuria discontinued his studies in 2009. At that time he was pursuing Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Humanities from Ramlal Anand College, Delhi University, and was in the 2nd year. later on he got in touch with another criminal Dheerpal Kana of Village Jatkheri, District Jhajhar of Haryana. And since then he has been involved in criminal activities.