Police today claimed to have busted a gang of extortionists with the arrest of its "kingpin" from sector 16-B of south-west Delhi's Dwarka area.
Vikas Gulia alias Lagarpuria (25) was arrested yesterday, police said, adding that an English pistol and four live cartridges were recovered from his possession.
"We received a secret information that Lagarpuria will arrive at the aforesaid area to meet someone in the evening. Accordingly, we laid a trap.
"On his arrival, our men stopped him there. Sensing himself being cornered by cops, Lagarpuria made an attempt to escape and whipped out a loaded pistol aiming at our team. But before he could do fire, our men overpowered him," a police official said.
On April 13, two cases of extortion were registered against the gang at police stations Baba Haridas Nagar and Chawla. In one of the cases, the gang members, unidentified then, had allegedly demanded Rs 25 lakh "protection money" from the complainant -- Sanjay Kumar.
The complainant had claimed that the members had opened fired at his shop Aggarwal Sweets in Najafgarh area on his refusal to pay the money.
Lagarpuria's associates in the two incidents -- Vikas alias PK, Vineet alias Johny and Pawan Gulia -- had been arrested by the sleuths two months ago.
"In view of gravity of the crime, we formed a dedicated team of personnel and launched search with deft technological penetration and secret information network led to arrest of the gangster, who was hiding at his hideouts in Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana etc," police said.
The "most-wanted" accused, native of Lagarpur village in Haryana, was head of a gang which was involved in crimes like murder, attempt to murder, robbery, extortion, police said.
The gang, which has "many" sharp shooters, also possessed sophisticated automatic weapons, police added.
