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Elusive after jumping parole in July, UP gangster arrested in Kolkata
A senior police official said the 40-year-old Lucknow gangster, Mohd Sohrab, who had been absconding for over four months after jumping parole from Delhi’s Tihar Jail, was found working as an app-based bike taxi driver using a forged identity. With his financial channels drying up, Sohrab had taken up the job to support himself and his wife, unaware that the app’s regular data trail would expose his location.
Driving a bike taxi and ferrying passengers in Kolkata, Uttar Pradesh’s dreaded gangster Mohd Sohrab’s run from the law ended on Monday when he was arrested in a joint operation by the UP Police and the Delhi Police Special Cell, UP ADG (law and order) Amitabh Yash confirmed on Wednesday.
A senior official said the 40-year-old Lucknow gangster, who had been absconding for over four months after jumping parole from Delhi’s Tihar Jail, was found working as an app-based bike taxi rider using a forged identity. With his financial channels drying up, Sohrab had taken up the job to support himself and his wife, unaware that the app’s regular data trail would expose his location. Forged identity documents were recovered from his possession, and police teams are now probing who helped him obtain the fake papers, the official said.
He added that Sohrab and his brothers had been receiving regular monthly financial support from associates in Lucknow and other districts. As part of the operation to arrest him, police identified these supporters and warned them against sending him money.
Officials said Sohrab was wanted by Delhi Police after Tihar authorities lodged an FIR when he failed to return from parole on July 1. Another official said a Delhi Police team had taken Sohrab into custody and was questioning him further. The focus is now on his network of aides who sheltered him, arranged fake documents, and kept his finances running while he was on the run.
Sharing more details, the official said Sohrab, the youngest of the infamous ‘serial killer brothers’ -- Salim, 48, Rustam, 43, and Sohrab, 40, -- faces more than 30 cases, including those related to murder, dacoity, robbery and extortion across several districts in UP and Delhi. The trio gained notoriety in 2005 after allegedly murdering three people in Lucknow on the same day, sparking widespread panic.
The official said Sohrab went missing after coming out on parole from Tihar Jail, where he, along with Salim and Rustam, had been lodged for over a decade after being sentenced to life imprisonment for a sensational jewellery showroom loot in Delhi in February 2011. The three brothers were arrested in the case in May 2011.
The official said the STF was deployed to trace Sohrab after he did not return to jail following the end of his parole period on July 4. “His parole formally ended on July 4, but he had already absconded from Lucknow by July 1,” the official said, adding, “We had been tracking him ever since and arrested him after tracing his location in Kolkata.”
Sources said Sohrab’s arrest became possible when investigators tracked his movements using data linked to the app-based bike taxi account he had created with a fake ID. “He believed driving an app bike would help him blend in and earn without drawing attention, but it eventually led us to him,” another officer said.
Sohrab reportedly travelled to Moradabad with his wife, passed through Lucknow, and even made a trip to Nepal after walking out of Tihar on parole, the officer said, adding that police were now mapping his movements and identifying everyone he met during this period.
His escape had triggered panic among witnesses in cases against him. Gopal Sharma, the sole witness in the murder of Pappu Pandey, had recently sought police protection, citing a threat to his life. News of Sohrab’s arrest has brought “immense relief” to these witnesses, officials said.
