Noida: Bawariya gang member linked to highway loots, sexual assaults held

NOIDA: The notorious ‘axle gangs’ operating on highways around Delhi-NCR have switched modus operandi and are using nails to deflate tyres and ambush commuters on desolate stretches, particularly on the KMP Expressway, the interrogation of a Bawariya gang member arrested on Friday by police’s special task force (STF) in Noida has revealed.

Dinesh alias Dinne, according to the STF, was part of the Bablu Bawariya gang that sodomised a 14-year-old boy on January 27 this year on the KMP Expressway in Haryana. STF officers also claimed Dinne had revealed during interrogation that his brother Ajay and their gang leader, Bablu, were involved in the horrifying sexual assault on NH-91 in Bulandshahr of a 35-year-old woman from Noida and her 14-year-old daughter in July 2016. The probe is with the CBI, which has filed charge sheets against six accused, and the STF said it will pass on the fresh revelations to the central agency.
Dinne’s arrest came 21 days after Bablu was killed in a police encounter on July 3. The January 27 attack by the gang was on a man and his nephew. Their car got a flat tyre around 10.30pm near Kanoli bridge. While the driver was changing the tyre, at least six masked robbed them before sexually assaulting the boy. The gang left after tying up the victims at the spot. An FIR was lodged at Hathin police station of Palwal district. Three other incidents of loot were reported from Tappal and Naujhil police station areas of Aligarh and Mathura, respectively, before that.
A family was robbed of Rs 10 lakh after their vehicle got a flat tyre on the Yamuna Expressway on the intervening night of October 23 and 24 in 2019. On January 23 this year, the gang allegedly deflated the tyre of a Baleno and took away a laptop, mobiles and Rs 8,000 from its occupants. The same day, they looted Rs 80,000 from another family in the Naujhil area of Mathura.
Rajkumar Mishra, DSP (STF) Noida, told TOI while the gang would earlier throw axles or a ‘khadanja’ – a piece of rubber with nails stuck on it -- under vehicles to ambush commuters on the highways, they had in recent months been leaving nails strewn across some spots on the highways. “After the Bulandshahr gang-rape case, people became aware. Commuters would stop at the sound of the axle hitting their vehicle but when they became aware, they stopped doing so. The gang then started using nails to puncture tyres,” Mishra said.
During the lockdown, multiple incidents of such loots have taken place on the KMP Expressway.
An Palwal police officer told TOI that in May and June, the gang had become especially active on the stretch of the KMP in Palwal district. According to the Noida STF, they had allegedly targeted a family in Palwal’s Hathin area and looted Rs 4,000 and gold and silver ornaments on the night of May 14. On May 24, Dinne and his gang members stopped a Creta and looted Rs 20,000 from the occupants in the Sadar area of Palwal. On June 22, they struck again in the same area, this time robbing a family of Rs 25,000. Dinne, who has seven cases of loot and dacoity registered against him, is a cousin of Bablu.
(The victim's identity has not been revealed to protect her privacy as per Supreme Court directives on cases related to sexual assault)