With the arrest of a close associate of a known criminal, Delhi Police have busted an organised gang of extortionists working from Uttar Pradesh.
Sunil Awasthi, an associate of Sanjeev Maheshwari, was arrested by Delhi Police on Friday.
Sanjeev, better known as Jeeva, was nabbed by Delhi Police Special Cell in 2006 and has been in jail since. He is said to be a close associate of gangster-turned-politicians Mukhtar Ansari and Munna Bajrangi.
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Jeeva is accused of murdering former Bharatiya Janata Party legislators Krishna Anand Rai and Brahm Dutt Dwivedi.
“A case was registered against Jeeva at Vivek Vihar police station in East Delhi, after he allegedly threatened a Delhi-based builder. He asked the builder to transfer two apartments from a residential project at a posh locality in Dehradun in the name of persons he had ‘nominated’,” said Deputy Commissioner of Police (East) Ajay Kumar.
Jeeva, who is in Barabanki jail for past nine years, had been threatening the builder from inside the jail. Technical surveillance revealed that Sunil was working with him.
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“Jeeva was guiding Sunil. It was later discovered that Sunil had been named in two extortion cases along with Jeeva in 2009 and 2011. Succumbing to police pressure, he had once surrendered before the Barabanki court and was arrested,” a police officer said.
Forty-one-year-old Jeeva used to be laboratory technician at a Muzaffarnagar nursing home.
In 1995, he was arrested for the first time in connection with a land dispute and series of robbery cases.
While in jail, he met western U.P.-based gangster Satender Barwala, who instructed him to meet one Vijay Singh from Farrukhabad after his release.
It was allegedly on Vijay’s instructions that Jeeva reportedly killed his rival, BJP MLA Brahm Dutt Dwivedi.
A Delhi-based builder was told to transfer two apartments from a residential project at a posh locality in Dehradun in the name of people Jeeva had ‘nominated’