Police to probe Kaushal’s involvement in murders of Vijay Batra, JD

The Gurugram police on Saturday took Kaushal, a most-wanted gangster, on transit remand from the Faridabad police and later remanded him to five days’ police custody, they said.

According to the police, they demanded his remand to investigate his involvement in the murder of 40-year-old Vijay Batra, alias Tantrik, outside a condominium on Sohna Road on February 22 allegedly for his refusal to pay ₹60 lakh to Kaushal that he lot while betting. Kaushal’s gang was also allegedly involved in the murder of one JD, a man with a criminal history, who was shot dead on January 23 in Shivaji Nagar after he allegedly refused to pay money to Kaushal.

The special task force of the Haryana Police on August 26 had arrested Kaushal from the Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport, Delhi.

Police commissioner Muhammad Akil said that Kaushal “is a criminal and will be treated as a criminal”. He added that Kaushal is wanted in several extortion, kidnapping and murder cases and the questioning will solve many cases and names of his accomplices will also be revealed. “The crime investigation team headed by Inspector Bijender Hooda had produced him before the district and sessions court on Saturday and he has been remanded for further interrogation. We need to verify who helped him to get details of the businessmen here in the city following which he used voice over internet protocol (VoIP) to make extortion and threatening calls. He was using virtual numbers, i.e., numbers without a directly associated line, to make businessmen assume they were getting calls from outside India,” he said.

The police said they wanted to know the names of the people who provided him mobile phones and SIM cards from Gurugram. Since he always had access to weapons and his gang members, arrested in the past, were in possession of weapons, the police said they wanted to find his source.

Kaushal had fled to Dubai in December 2017 and had shifted several locations. “We want to know where he stayed and who helped him in that journey, who had fled with him for Dubai and how he established his network there. He was in touch with several people who are still in Gurugram and we need their details to question them to unravel several clues ,” Bijender Hooda, Inspector, CIA-Palam Vihar, said.

The police said he had made several calls to businessmen in Gururgram and many had paid him protection money, but they wanted to know who collected the amount and through whom it was sent to him, including the names of his hawala traders.

“We want to unravel his network as well as his plan of action,” Akil said.

According to the police, his associates would collect money and send it to him through hawala transactions (informal monetary transactions) after Kaushal made extortion calls from Dubai using virtual numbers. “Three of his associates are key members of his gang and have been evading arrest. They were regularly in touch with Kaushal and were also collecting protection money from liquor traders, hoteliers, jewellers, industrialists and other businessmen in Faridabad, Palwal and Gurugram,” a police officer involved in the operation said.

Kaushal had arrived in Dubai on a tourist visa and then taken a work visa for two years.

According to the police, there are numerous cases of murder, extortion, blackmail and threat calls, made through international numbers, against Kaushal; he has more than 200 cases registered against him in Haryana.

First Published: Sep 07, 2019 23:35 IST