Delhi encounter: Rajesh Bharti, the gangster who killed his own father at the age of 11

Gangster Rajesh Bharti, gunned by the special cell on Saturday morning, had made his foray into the world of crime at the age of 11 with the murder of his own father. In May 1993, Bharti, a resident of Haryana’s Jind, about 100 km from the national Capital, had spent a few months at a juvenile detention centre for the crime.

It is unclear what prompted him to stab his own father. But police believe his father had thrashed Bharti for gambling, which prompted him to murder his father.

Saturday’s afternoon shootout, in which he was killed, was not the first time Bharti had an exchange of gunfire with Delhi Police. On March 8, 2011, when the police got a tip-off about Bharti meeting his associates in south Delhi’s Rangpuri Pahadi area near Vasant Kunj, they went to arrest him but faced a volley of bullets.

This was days after Bharti had kidnapped a Delhi university student and taken a ransom of R35 lakh. Bharti and his gang had initially demanded R 3 crore from the student’s father.

An officer, who has interrogated Bharti, said the man was influenced by gangster-based movies.“There have been cases when Bharti and his men printed pamphlets, naming themselves as Kranti or Bharti gang, and left them at their target’s house after making extortion calls or firing outside their residence or office,” said an officer.

In July last year, police arrested Aman Khadkadi alias Azad, an alleged sharpshooter of Bharti’s gang, for the murder of a property dealer in Dwarka. Outside the property dealer’s office, Bharti and his men and left pamphlets that read ‘ Rajesh Bharti’. Aman told police during interrogation that they got this idea from a Hindi movie they were watching at a hotel in Uttarakhand.

Police say Bharti’s gang started as carjackers along roads connecting Delhi and Haryana and later graduated to kidnapping for ransom and extortion.

“From excerpts of the extortion call that was intercepted by police, it is clear that Bharti had started dropping names of gangsters in the D Company. He boasted about his contacts with Chhota Shakeel, who is Dawood Ibrahim’s right hand man. He even threatened his victims to kill them outside India. Prima facie, we do not have any evidence to say that he has links with D Company,” the officer said.

Police believe Bharti was getting desperate in the last few months and was trying to spread his reign of terror in Delhi and become bigger than jailed gangster Neeraj Bawana.

“In Delhi, he has only carjacking and kidnapping cases but in the last few months, he had been making extortion calls to many Delhi traders and bookies. With Bawana in jail and another absconding gangster Jitender Gogia staying away from Delhi, he was hoping to strike it big. He was active in areas such as Dwarka and Najafgarh,” said an officer.