How did National Capital Region’s most-wanted criminal Kapil Sangwan manage to flee India?

Like a scene out of a crime thriller,  Kapil Sangwan alias Nandu, who was reported to be under the scanner of multiple security agencies including the Special Cell and Crime Branch, has reportedly fled the country. Sangwan is said to be one of the most wanted gangsters, who carried a reward of Rs 2 lakh on his head. According to a report in the Indian Express, Delhi  Police suspect that Sangwan, who operates his gang from the Najafgarh area and is wanted in cases of murder and also under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA), may have already reached Dubai via Thailand. The police suspect that the criminal used “a fake passport procured from Uttar Pradesh’s Bareilly after submitting forged documents.”

According to news reports Kapil Sangwan was on the run before he was arrested by Rajasthan Police following a shootout at Fagi village near Jaipur, and had been in jail since 2016.  Times of India reported that he was granted parole for a month last year, starting June 24, 2019, upon his request for “some important personal work.”

The IE reports that soon after that  Sangwan’s associates had “thrown a grand party at a farmhouse built on encroached government property in Najafgarh, and the guest list included criminals from Southwest Delhi and Haryana. But before his arrival, a Crime Branch team crashed the party and arrested 22 members of a criminal gang in one sweep.”

However, Sangwan “didn’t turn up at the party and went underground even after his parole ended. When police checked with his family members, they found he was missing,” the report quotes a senior police officer. Sangwan was known for  extorting money from businessmen in Southwest Delhi and Special Cell and Crime Branch teams had been on his trail. On July 31, a team of the Special Cell’s Counter Intelligence unit arrested his brother, Jyoti Sangwan, from Gujarat’s Surat reported IE. “Months after Jyoti’s arrest, police found that Kapil had made a fake passport from Bareilly. He even went to the local police station for document verification. On the basis of their investigation findings, an FIR was registered by the counter intelligence unit. They found during their investigation that Kapil first went to Thailand and later to Dubai,” the IE’s source revealed

Police said  Sangwan got the fake passport with the help of a local agent for Rs 4.5 lakh and also “asked his brother Jyoti and associate, Dhiren Kariya, a Junagadh resident who is a notorious bootlegger, to make their passports as well.”

“Jyoti and Kariya had also made passports from forged documents. They were planning to leave the country, but had to change their plan due to the pandemic. Delhi Police informed Bareilly Police about the lapses, asking to take departmental action against those responsible,” the officer said. Police have prepared the chargesheet against Jyoti and Kariya and are likely to file it in the coming days before a Delhi court. A look-out circular has been issued against Kapil reported IE.

According to Indian Express Kariya had filed a nomination for the Junagadh Lok Sabha seat as an independent candidate in 2019, he is a listed state-level bootlegger in the police list and faces a number of criminal cases, including under the Prohibition Act.  

According to a report in The Wire, the ‘Nandu’ gang members were reportedly involved in the killing of TikTok celebrity Mohit Mor in Najafgarh in May 2019. The TOI added that one of the gang members, Giri Raj Tomar, was also involved with the shooting of a 30-year-old woman in Dwarka sector-12, in 2019, he had jumped parole in January 2019. While a look-out circular has been issued against Sangwan, the police have prepared the chargesheet against Jyoti and Kariya and are expected to file it soon before a Delhi court.

Meanwhile the Delhi Police are yet to explain how such a notorious criminal has been on the run for so many months, managed a forged passport, and then escaped the country! The gangster had been out of jail since 2019 and was a major security threat to the NCR region and to public safety all this while.

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