First crime at age 10, ringleader of ‘burgle-and-burn’ gang is now 25, out on bail

Sanjay has more than 20 cases, including burglaries, thefts and armed robberies, against him.

The ‘uncrowned crown prince’ of the city’s gangsters is back. Released from a four-year stint in jail three months ago, 25-year-old Sanju (alias Sanjay), the ringleader of Firebrand Gang — a notorious ‘burgle-and-burn gang’ — has racked up a substantial number (more than 20) of crimes, including burglaries, thefts and armed robberies.

Sanju (pictured) started living on pavements and hiding in empty water tanks of government flats at a very young age to avoid being arrested after his father disowned him. (HT File Photo/Sunil Saxena)

According to the police, he has been arrested in three cases — an armed robbery committed on January 25 this year, a failed robbery bid on February 11, and the possession of a pistol and three cartridges with the intent of attempting his modus operandi (setting the house on fire after a burglary) in a government flat in Sarojini Nagar committed on December 18 last year.

But the fact that he has been bailed out quickly (in less than a month) in one case (in the Arms Act case of December 18) and that the charges against him in the other two cases are not enough to keep him behind bars has been haunting south Delhi’s Sarojini Nagar, RK Puram and Kotla Mubarakpur police.

Sanju’s foray into crime began in 2002, when he was 10 years old (and living with his father and older sister in Sarojini Nagar) with a theft in the neighbourhood. “It’s all because of my father; he drove me to this kind of life. He would drink and beat my sister after my mother died. I fell in bad company, got addicted to drugs, started stealing because I liked gambling, and here I am,” Sanju had said in an interview to Hindustan Times after his arrest in 2011.

As Sanju’s criminal activities increased after 2007 (more than 20 cases of robbery, house breaking and burglaries and arson were reported till his arrest in 2011) and the police started raiding his house now and again, his father disowned him. He became a vagabond and started living on the pavements and hiding in empty water tanks of government flats to avoid being arrested.

A house in Laxmibai Nagar near Sarojini Nagar that was burgled and burnt allegedly by the gang.

“Sanju would get high on smack or white correction fluid (applied to paper to mask errors in text) with his associates and sleep inside water tanks during the day. The group would then commit burglaries by night and later dispose off stolen articles in Bihar through one of their contacts. He mostly targeted government flats that had window or split air conditioners as he believed that those who install ACs were rich people and committing burglaries in such house earned him maximum profit,” says a police officer.

As a juvenile, Sanju was well-versed with the IPC and used all the loopholes he could find within the juvenile justice laws to evade the police or get them a rap on the knuckles over some technicality.

“Sanju knew that the juvenile justice laws prohibit police to arrest a juvenile, handcuff him, interrogate him, keep him in police station lock-up, or send him to jail (instead sent to correction home). He used to harm himself by banging his head against the wall in the police station or with self-inflicting cuts before being produced before the juvenile justice board to make the judge believe that cops tortured him in their custody,” says the officer.

His teenage years were marked by a spree of crimes and he seemed to embody three of the numerous tattoos across his body — denger (sic), darinda, mahakaal (danger, demon, destroyer).

The police managed to arrest him for the first time only in February 2011 — two months after he turned 18. At that time, he was already the leader of approximately 35 like-minded juveniles and adults, who, like him, loved tattoos, body piercing, branded clothes, slick hairstyles and drugs.

Inspector Sanjiv Mandal (then posted to the Sarojini Nagar police station), instrumental in apprehending Sanju as many as five times between 2009 and 2011, says Sanju and his gang members only targeted locked government flats because he hated government servants, specially police personnel.

“They would scale houses using drain pipes, break open locks and decamp with cash and valuables. They would then set the house on fire to wipe out any accidental evidence. They also believed it was auspicious,” says the inspector.

Besides gaining a reputation for ‘burgle-and-burn’, Sanju also became notorious as a robber who carried firearms, red chilli powder and committed street crimes like snatching and robbery.

After he was released in October 2017, Sanju was first allegedly caught with a pistol, three bullets and a plastic packet of red chilli powder, following information that he was consuming heroin with his associates in a park in Laxmibai Nagar on December 18. “We interrogated Sanju to ascertain where he procured the firearm from and its purpose. He said that he and his associates were planning a burglary in one of the government flats in Laxmibai Nagar,” says a police officer familiar with the case.

Sanju was jailed, but because he was only arrested for possessing a firearm, he was bailed out quickly in January this year. It took him less than a week to regroup with his cohorts and commit another crime — this time a serious one.

On January 25 around 9.30 pm, V Sathish Prabhu Kumar, an assistant engineer posted to Tamil Nadu House, had stepped out of his car outside his government-allotted flat in Sarojini Nagar. Suddenly, four men stopped him and one of them put a pistol to his head. “The four allegedly robbed Kumar of his two expensive mobile phones and ₹18,000, and fled on two motorcycles,” says another police officer privy to the case.

A few days later, the investigating team caught two of the suspects and their interrogation revealed that the man who had held the complainant at gunpoint was Sanju. While a manhunt to nab Sanju was launched, he was caught red-handed by the locals during a snatching bid in North Delhi’s Rani Bagh on February 11.

According to the complainant Monica Gupta, she was out for shopping with her husband when a man snatched her gold chain and tried to flee. Her husband caught the snatcher with the help of the locals. It was Sanju, who tried to mislead the cops by identifying himself as Satish. However, thanks to fingerprint records, Sanju was identified and sent to jail.

When the Sarojini Nagar police learnt about Sanju’s arrest recently, they secured his police custody remand and arrested him in the robbery case. “His interrogation led to the solving of 10 more burglary and theft cases,” says a senior police officer associated with cases against Sanju.

What the police is very worried about, though, is Sanju’s modus operandi while in jail. He meets like-minded inmates, forms a gang, and starts committing crimes once they are released on bail.

“It is a part of the professional policing to keep a watch on criminals and their activities. If a criminal is arrested, the investigating officer and other personnel of the police station concerned are duty-bound to keep themselves updated in terms of the court proceedings and release of the criminal from jail. Preventive measures should be taken to make sure the criminal does not begin a rerun of his criminal activities,” says Dependra Pathak, special commissioner and chief spokesperson of the Delhi Police.