New Delhi, Feb 21: National Investigation Agency (NIA) sleuths on Tuesday swooped on 76 locations in seven states and the national capital in connection with three cases related to a nexus between drug mafia, organised criminal gangs and terror groups, officials said here.
Besides Delhi, the raids were being conducted in Maharashtra, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh. The agency has recovered Rs 1.5 crore cash from one of the associates of a criminal gang, the officials said.
During the searches, 11 pistols, revolvers and rifles have been seized, along with ammunition. Also, incriminating documents, digital devices and were seized.
After the NIA registered the three cases in August last year, this is the fifth round of raids by the agency against top gangsters, their criminal and business associates in Punjab, Delhi, Haryana and Rajasthan; and arms suppliers based in UP, Punjab and the national capital.
An NIA spokesperson said the agency on Tuesday conducted searches at 76 locations spread across Punjab (Abohar, Bhatinda, Muktsar Sahab, Moga, Ludhiana, Mohali, Ferozpur, Tarn Taran, Ludhiana districts); Haryana (Gurugram, Yamuna Nagar, Rohtak, Mahendragarh, Sirsa and Jhajjar districts); Rajasthan (Churu, Bharatpur and Alwar districts); Uttar Pradesh (Bagpat, Bareilly, Pratapgarh, Bulanshehar and Pilibhit districts); and Delhi-NCR (Dwarka, Outer North, Central and Outer North districts).
The action ramps up the ongoing NIA effort to dismantle these trans-national terror and crime networks.
The searches on Tuesday were conducted at the houses or premises of Lakhvir Singh of Gidderbaha at Muktsar; Naresh at Abohar; Surender alias Cheeku of Narnaul in Haryana; Kaushal Choudhary and Amit Dagar of Gurugram; and Sunil Rathi of Bagpat UP and their Hawala associates, some kabaddi players, weapon suppliers, gun houses, business frontmen, financiers and logistics associates.
The spokesperson said that further investigations will continue to dismantle such terror networks as well as their funding and support infrastructure.
Preliminary investigations have revealed that these gangs were carrying out targeted killings and were also raising funds to carry out such criminal activities through smuggling of drugs, Hawala network and weapons.
The recent sensational crimes and extortion calls by criminal syndicates and gangsters to businessmen, professionals, including doctors had created a widespread scare among the people, the spokesperson said. They were using cyber-space to publicise these crimes to create a terror among the public at large.
The probe also indicated that such criminal acts were not isolated local incidents but a result of deep-rooted conspiracy by terrorists, gangsters and drug-smuggling cartels and networks operating from within and outside the country.
Many gang leaders and members who have fled the country are now operating from foreign nations including Pakistan, Canada, Malaysia, Australia, and planning crimes with criminals lodged in jails in different states of India, the spokesperson said.
The ongoing probes by the NIA in cases being investigated by the agency, such as the killing of Sanjay Biyani in Maharashtra, Sandeep Nangal Ambia in Punjab also showed that most of these conspiracies were being hatched from inside jails in different states and were being executed by an organised network of operatives based out of the country, the spokesperson said.
The NIA had registered the three cases — out of which two were taken over from the elite special cell of Delhi Police — to probe the unholy nexus that was creating unstability in some states especially Punjab where various dormant terror groups had suddenly become active, the officials quoted above said.
The NIA had taken over a case registered against criminal gangs including Gaurav Patyal alias Sourav Thakur; Sukhdool Singh alias Sukh Duneke Gurpinder Singh alias Baba Dalla; Bhupinder Singh alias Bhupi (all from Punjab); Rana Kaushal alias Naresh and Amit Dagar (Haryana); Neeraj Sehrawat alias Neeraj Bawana Sunil Mann alias Sunil Baliyan (from Delhi) and other unknown persons.
These gangs had conspired to recruit youths to commit terrorist acts in India with an intention to strike terror in the minds of people.
These gangs were involved in raising funds through extortions, criminal intimidation, smuggling of narcotics, sale of illegal weapons and the funds so generated were used to finance terror activities and recruit impressionable youths in their gangs in order to escalate such activities. (Agencies)
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