NEW DELHI: A gangster who has been featuring on the list of top criminals in the city has been caught by the Special Cell after a
shootout with two of his associates near Dwarka. The criminal, Ashu Shokeen, was wanted for kidnapping the son of a former councillor from Netaji Subhash Place in north-west Delhi last year. One of his two associates,
Manjeet Dabas, had a reward of Rs 1 lakh for his arrest. A large cache of ammunition was recovered from them.
Manjeet Dabas
DCP (special cell) Sanjeev Yadav said that a police team had tracked down Dabas’s associate Ashu Shokeen while he had come to meet his maternal uncle near Jhajjar. He was found to be travelling in an SUV which was intercepted on Gurgaon-Jhajjar road. During interrogation, he revealed that he was scheduled to meet Dabas and their third associate Bhagat at a safe house near Chhawla in Dwarka. They would be using a service road to travel to the safe house to avoid being detected.
“The two men were spotted on a bike around midnight near sector 23 in Dwarka. When the police team had signaled them to stop, they tried to speed away. However, on the way they lost the balance and fell. They were asked to surrender, but they managed to get up and started fleeing on foot in different directions and opened fire at the police team,” said DCP Yadav.
When the cops retaliated, Dabas was forced to stop and was caught by the police team, Bhagat too was found to be hiding nearby.
During interrogation, the three men revealed that Dabas had conspired with his former employer Mahesh Thekedar to kidnap the son of the ex-councillor, while they had taken the contract to collect toll from a booth in south Delhi. Thekedar was caught by a team from the crime branch. As per the plan, Dabas had procured the uniform of a traffic police constable and lent out two khaki uniforms for the other two.
They had followed the victim after he had left home in BMW car and intercepted him at Netaji Subhash Place. Dabas, posing as a traffic cop, forced the victim to unlock the vehicle on the pretext of checking his papers and pulled him out. He was forced to board a Scorpio car and taken to the safe house. They demanded a ransom of Rs 50 crore from the ex-councillor which was negotiated to Rs one crore.
The ex-councillor paid Rs one crore as ransom and promised to pay the rest once his son was released. A case was registered at the NS Place police station and later the case was transferred to the crime branch.
Bhagat
Dabas revealed that the booty was distributed among all the gang members, but a lion’s share was kept by Mahesh. However, after Mahesh was arrested along with some other members of the gang, Dabas had panicked and threatened to kill the ex-councillor’s family members. The crime branch had registered a case in this regard. A reward of Rs one lakh was registered against him after this.
He is being interrogated further to identify some other associates.
Ashu Shokeen