Munna Bajrangi, on whom the CBI had announced a reward of Rs.5 lakh in connection with the murder of BJP MLA Krishnanand Rai and his supporters at Ghazipur in U.P. in November 2005, has been arrested in the Malad suburb of Mumbai by the Special Cell of the Delhi police.
Prem Prakash Singh alias Munna Bajrangi was allegedly involved in a number of criminal cases of U.P. and carried a total reward of over Rs.7 lakh on his head. Acting on a tip-off that he was hiding in Malad, a Special Cell team was despatched to conduct searches. He was arrested on Thursday afternoon.
Preliminary investigations revealed that in the past few years Bajrangi had extorted huge sums as protection money from businessmen in different States including UP, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.
Said to be one of the most dreaded criminals in UP, Bajrangi is one of the ten accused in the murder of Krishnanand Rai. Former MLA Mukhtar Ansari is the prime accused.
Bajrangi belongs to Sureri village in Jaunpur. He was initially a carpet weaver and later started working as a bus conductor. He entered into the world of crime after he allegedly came in contact with some local criminals. He came into the limelight after he allegedly murdered “Block Pramukh” Ram Chander Singh and his security guard in Jaunpur in the early 1990s.
Around the same time, Bajrangi allegedly murdered another Block Pramukh. He then came in contact with another gangster from Varanasi and they allegedly committed a series of murders.Bajrangi subsequently came in contact with Mukhtar Ansari and allegedly started working with him to eliminate his rivals. It is alleged that he gradually took to smuggling of arms, drugs and gold. According to the Delhi police, he was once an accomplice of Dawood Ibrahim.
He is alleged to be the first among eastern U.P. criminals to have used an AK-47 assault rifle. He was arrested by the U.P. Special Task Force in 1998 following an encounter, after which he remained in jail. He came out on bail in 2002 after which he went underground.
