Tajpuria murder: Rights body issues notices; Delhi govt to conduct inquiry

Tillu (33) was from outer Delhi’s Tajpur Kalan village, gave up his education after Class 10 and wanted to pursue a career as a wrestler. Gogi (31), meanwhile, was born in Alipur, around 8km away, was a keen sportsman and enrolled in Delhi University on a sports quota entry. The two met when both were in school

For the better part of the last 15 years, the criminal gangs run by Jitender Maan (better known as Gogi) and Sunil Baliyan (as Tillu Tajpuria), battled it out on the streets of the National Capital Region, a brutal turf war that left several dead and kept the police on tenterhooks. The bitter rivalry plumbed new depths in September 2021, when members of Tillu’s gang shot Gogi dead in a Rohini courtroom.

Relatives of Tillu Tajpuria outside the mortuary of Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital, in New Delhi. (PTI)

Gogi’s supporters returned the favour on Tuesday morning, when four men stabbed Tillu to death inside his Tihar jail.

But, much less bring down the curtains on one the city’s most violent rivarlries, the Delhi Police expect the power vacuums left by the two murders to widen the conflict between the gangs and precipitate more bloodshed.

And yet, this turf war mutated from an inseparable childhood friendship nearly two decades ago.

Tillu (33) was from outer Delhi’s Tajpur Kalan village, gave up his education after Class 10 and wanted to pursue a career as a wrestler. Gogi (31), meanwhile, was born in Alipur, around 8km away, was a keen sportsman and enrolled in Delhi University on a sports quota entry. The two met when both were in school.

The rivalry soured in 2010, when they supported opposing candidates in the Shraddhanand College student elections. Gogi threw his weight behind Arun (better known as Commando) while Tillu lent his support to his cousin.

In the run-up to the elections, Tillu’s supporters assaulted Commando, forcing him to withdraw his candidacy.

That assault marked the origins of conflict that would occupy Delhi Police personnel for years to come.

“The animosity soured further over the next few years, when Deepak, a close friend of Tillu, started dating Gogi’s cousin. Gogi and his associates felt humiliated, and they killed Deepak in Delhi’s Mahendra Park area on January 20, 2015,” said a Delhi Police officer.

His was the first of at least 20 lives lost to the rivalry in the years since.

“Tillu’s gang avenged Deepak’s murder by killing Commando the next month in Alipur,” said the officer.

Just over the next month, the gang’s killed one more person each, as the conflict snowballed.

“The revenge killings didn’t stop even when they were imprisoned,” said a second police officer.

The two gangs also fought viciously for supremacy among the crime syndicates of Delhi-NCR, extorting industrialists and traders across the region.

Soon, the gangs expanded and collaborated with other criminal groups in Delhi as well as in Haryana, Rajasthan, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh. These symbiotic groups then organised interstate syndicates that expanded into illegal mining and liquor smuggling, said a Delhi Police special cell officer.

Bitter equations between the survivor members of each group and their networks will keep the rivalry going, said experts.

“The rivalry between the members of Tillu and Gogi gangs has gone beyond their personal enmity. When Gogi was killed, his gang members pledged to take revenge and executed at least a couple immediate revenge killings. Now that Tillu is dead, his gang members and supporters won’t sit silent. The coming few weeks will be crucial for us, as we won’t want to see blood spilling on streets,” said a senior special cell officer.