11 members of Shetty gang arrested

Mumbai, Thane, Oct 22: Police today claimed to have crushed the notorious Santosh Shetty gang with the arrest of its 11 hardcore criminals, including the vagabond son of a police constable and four others, from Varanasi.

The gang had unleashed a reign of terror in Mumbai, Thane, Kalyan, Dombivili and Ambernath.

Addressing an impromptu news conference at the police headquarter here in the midst of the festival of lights, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime) Sanjay Shintre told mediapersons a team of police personnel deployed on this special task also recovered arms from them.

The gangsters, arrested from Kalyan, Girgaun Court and the VT area, were mostly in the age group of 20-30 except for one, who was over 40, the DCP said.

Since last six months, the gang had unleashed a reign of terror in and around Thane. Gang members were assigned different tasks including collecting information of probable victims, providing accessories, actual implementation of the task, and post operation care, Mr Shintre said.

Each gang member worked in isolation and was not aware of what the other person did, he pointed out.

The gang had a meticulously planned network for conducting their operations. Therefore, in the same manner, a network of policemen was set up in the Thane police to nab them, the DCP said.

''That were finally nabbed in the in the midst of Diwali, which symbolises the triumph of good over evil,'' he added.

The team was set up by the Thane Police Commissioner D Shivanandan, and it functioned under the guidance of Mr Shintre.

The DCP said the local court remanded them to the police custody for relatively long periods. Giving details of the modus operandi of the gang, Mr Shintre said they would initially gather details of the politician or businessman, who was to be made a target. The criminals would later give him threatening calls, and scare him with a revolver. If the victim did not succumb and give in to their demands, they would then wound and terrorise him.

They would only select big politicians or prominent businessmen, so that the attack created a fear psychosis in the society, Mr Shintre added.

Various crimes, including murder, attempt to murder, extortion, criminal intimidation, among others, had been registered against them at several police station in the state.

The DCP is hopeful that the arrest of these criminals, would help the police get some leads of the gang kingpin, Santosh Shetty.

The criminals had allegedly been involved in attacks on Gulab Karanjule, Ambernath, Pradeep Joshi, Dombivili, Ramesh Mhatre, Dombivli and Chetan Budela, CP Tank, Mumbai.

The arrested were identified as Sachin Sakharam Yadavade (Kalyan), son of police constable, Tushar Balkrishna Thorat, (Kalyan), Dilip alias Ashok Bunty Varma, Kalyan, Mohan Haribhau Kapde alias Inverter alias Fouji alias Master of Lonavala, Pune (he was the supplier of weapons and is a black belt), Pravin Nivrutti Pagare alias Surya, Ambernath, Budharam Ganpat Sarnobat, Titwala, and Sachin Ramchandra Bhagat of Dunga in Bhiwandi.

The Varanasi-based gangsters were identified as Ajaykumar Vijaykumar Dhavan, Sajan Ramchandra Gound, Abhishekh Shobnath Prajapati, and Ashok Mohan Yadav.

Another member of the same gang, who was considered to be one of the leaders, Bobby alias Rajesh Nair, was killed in an encounter with the Thane Police team a few days ago.

UNI