Delhi Police Special Cell nabbed a wanted gangster on Friday in an operation they called D-24.
The Haryana-based criminal, Kala Jathedi, who had a bounty reward of ₹6 lakh on his head was arrested along with his accomplice Anuradha Chaudhary, the police said.
Deputy Commissioner of Police (Special Cell) Manishi Chandra said that Jathedi was wanted in more than 25 cases across States — was arrested with Chaudhary near Sarsawa toll at Saharanpur-Yamuna Nagar highway in Uttar Pradesh.
Describing the operation, Mr. Chandra said that in the last year and a half, the team has already apprehended 20 important members of the gang in different operations. Interrogations of previously arrested criminals led to drawing up of an operation for nabbing the kingpin Sandeep alias Kala Jathedi.
Team trail work
The team worked for over four months before it came across some leads in Goa. The team started trailing the identifiers from Goa and the search led them to Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana and Uttarakhand.
“They were finally able to grab a footage which showed Kala Jathedi in a Sikh attire along with Anuradha. Thereafter, the operation was code-named ‘Op D-24’ to signify that the criminal was running ahead of us by only 24 hours and it was a race against time to reduce this to D-20/16/12 and so on,” Mr. Chandra said.
International alliance
The police said that after the escape of Jathedi from Haryana Police custody in 2020, he and Anuradha alias Revolver Rani were jointly heading a major international criminal alliance which has known nodes of wanted criminal Virender Pratap alias Kala Rana from Haryana’s Karnal operating from Thailand, Satenderjeet Singh alias Goldy Brar of Punjab’s Muktsar and operating from Canada and Monty of Punjab operating from the U.K.
“This criminal alliance was engaged in high-profile extortions, inter-State bootlegging, especially in dry States, illegal firearms smuggling and land grabbing. To maintain their unquestioned supremacy in the underworld of Delhi-Punjab-Haryana-Rajasthan, the alliance had got over 20 opponents eliminated over the previous two years,” Mr. Chandra said. He was also the mastermind behind the escape from custody of accused Kuldeep Mann alias Fajja from GTB Hospital, Shahdara. Fajja was subsequently killed in a Special Cell operation within three days of his escape.
Under disguise
Talking about Anuradha, the police said that she has a long criminal history of abduction, extortion, Arms and Excise Act violations, cheating and is known to have fired from AK-47 to intimidate victims.
After spreading rumours that he had fled the country, Jathedi had disguised himself as a Sikh and started growing a beard and wearing a turban, the police said, adding that after Anuradha Chaudhary joined him. They got fake identities as husband and wife and were constantly shifting bases across different States to avoid any trail. “They had formulated stringent protocols for communication amongst themselves and accomplices to maintain fail-proof secrecy,” Mr. Chandra said.
