Absconding driver in Greater Kailash shooting case held

A week after the south Delhi gang war, the sixth absconding accused has been arrested by the Crime Branch, police said here on Saturday.

The accused -- Anup Kumar Tiwari, 28, -- was the driver of gangster Deepak Pandit for four years, Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Ravindra Yadav said.

On the intervening night, between August 22 and 23, Pandit and his associates had allegedly shot dead another gangster-turned-property dealer Raju Ramakant Rao at an intersection in south Delhi's Greater Kailash area.

They first hit Rao's motorbike with their Scorpio SUV, being driven by Tiwari, and then opened fire at him.

Tiwari was constantly changing his hideouts after the incident and the district police could not track him despite conducting raids at several locations in Delhi-NCR.

"Yesterday evening (Friday), police arrested him near ISKCON temple where he had come to meet an associate," said the joint commissioner of police.

After the SUV was chased by a police team, Tiwari sped the vehicle towards Greater Kailash I and ended up entering a residential lane with no further escape route. After the SUV rammed into an iron gate, the occupants rushed out of the vehicle and scattered around.

While five of the alleged assailants chose to hide in and around a park, and later got pinned down one after another by policemen, who were helped by residents and security guards, Tiwari chose to take shelter inside a building, a senior police official of south-east district said.

The next day, one of the CCTV grabs, obtained from S Block of GK-I, revealed that Tiwari had escaped from the locality between 8.30 a.m. and 9 a.m., long after the action was over, the police official said.

Police are yet to recover six lakh rupees in cash, which Rao was reported to be carrying at the time of the incident. He was heading towards southwest Delhi's Tigri village after collecting the cash from a property consultant in outer Delhi.