Wanted gangster held

Delhi Police have arrested Vikas Lagarpuria (25), one of the top 10 gangsters, wanted for dozens of criminal cases including murder, attempt to murder, robbery and extortion. Lagarpuria is the kingpin and was operating his own gang. He had also attacked former legislator from Najafgarh Bharat Singh in 2012 where Singh had a narrow escape. Later the politician was killed in another shootout earlier this year.

Delhi Police on Sunday claimed that with the arrest of Lagarpuria, they have busted a gang of extortionists from sector 16-B of South-West Delhi’s Dwarka area. Lagarpuria was arrested on Saturday and the cops have recovered an English pistol and four live cartridges. “We received a secret information that Lagarpuria will arrive at the aforesaid area to meet someone in the evening. Accordingly, we laid a trap,” a senior police official said.

“On his arrival, our men stopped him there. Sensing a threat, 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,” a police official said.

Lagarpuria gang reportedly has several  <g data-gr-id="40">sharp shooters</g> with  sophisticated automatic weapons. The kingpin operates his gang along with other dreaded criminals- <g data-gr-id="41">Dheerpal</g> Kana, <g data-gr-id="42">Dheerpal</g> <g data-gr-id="43">Reduwas</g> and Mahender, who are presently lodged in Bhondsi Jail in Gurgaon. The gangster was operating his gang in Delhi and Haryana. Such was his terror that his rival gangs, which are being run by Manjeet Mahal, Naveen <g data-gr-id="44">Khati</g>, Vicky Dagar, were also afraid of him.

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. Lagarpuria’s associates in the two incidents -- Vikas alias PK, Vineet alias Johny and Pawan <g data-gr-id="35">Gulia</g> -- 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 led to arrest of the gangster, who was hiding at his hideouts in Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana etc,” police said. The “most-wanted” accused, <g data-gr-id="47">native</g> of Lagarpur village in Haryana, was head of a gang which was involved in crimes like murder, attempt to murder, robbery, extortion, police said.