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Five of Bishnoi gang arrested, foreign pistols, ammo seized
The men were allegedly preparing to eliminate members of the rival Kaushal gang at Farrukhnagar in Gurugram, Bambiha gang in Punjab and another one in Rajasthan, but their arrest foiled the plan, STF officials said
Gurugram: A Special Task Force (STF) team of the Haryana Police arrested five members of Lawrence Bishnoi’s gang with a cache of foreign pistols and ammunition, police officials aware of the matter said on Monday.
The men were allegedly preparing to eliminate members of the rival Kaushal gang at Farrukhnagar in Gurugram, Bambiha gang in Punjab and another one in Rajasthan, but their arrest foiled the plan, STF officials said.
STF personnel identified the arrested suspects as Dinesh alias Dinu of Devsar in Bhiwani, Jagdish alias Jaggu and Vishnu Ram of Abohar in Fazilka, Punjab, Sagar Kumar of Kosi in Mathura, Uttar Pradesh and Pradeep Kumar of Samaspur, Delhi. Incidentally, Abohar and Jatoli in Farrukhnagar are the birthplaces of rival gangsters Lawrence Bishnoi and Kaushal.
Five foreign pistols including four 9mm Glocks manufactured in Austria worth overall about ₹70-75 lakh in the international market and 51 live cartridges were seized from the possession of the arrested gang members, police said.
Preet Pal Sangwan, deputy superintendent of police heading the Gurugram unit of the STF that carried out the entire operation spanning almost five months, said Dinesh was the first to be held from Farrukhnagar on Saturday.
“We recovered a Glock pistol and five live cartridges from his possession. He had started working as a contractor and used to supply Wi-Fi and broadband connections at homes as a cover to mask his other activities. On the basis of the information given by Dinesh during interrogation, we arrested four other gang members from one of their safehouses at Abohar on Sunday. From them, four more foreign pistols and 46 live cartridges were seized,” Sangwan said adding each of the pistols cost upto ₹15 lakh.
The DSP said that they had planned to murder rival gang members in Gurugram, Punjab and Rajasthan. “They were in touch with gangster Rohit Godara and were working on the directions of Lawrence Bishnoi. Jagdish was arranging finances for the four other members,” he said.
Investigators said that two suspects, including Sagar, had already stayed at the accommodation arranged by Dinesh and had even carried out a detailed recce of a member of the Kaushal gang in Farrukhnagar, whom they had planned to eliminate soon.
Afterwards, they had planned to murder another rival from the Bambiha gang in Punjab and another one in Rajasthan. STF officials said that all five suspects were maintaining an extremely low profile for the last several months to avoid any suspicion and to avoid law enforcement agencies. They were also not using their phones in an attempt to avoid surveillance.
Sangwan said that the STF had received a tip-off about their plans to establish the supremacy of Lawrence Bishnoi’s gang in three states, including Haryana about five months back.
“Following this, we launched an operation and started gathering intelligence from various sources including incarcerated criminals and got hints about murder plots following which the five men were finally arrested,” he added.
STF officials said that it was still not clear how and from whom the suspects had procured the foreign pistols. They said that the four shooters arrested on Sunday were sent to four-day police remand for detailed interrogation after they were produced before a city court on Monday.
