Gangster who gave NIA a slip lands in police net

Mohali: Gangster Deepak Singh ‘Rana’, who had dodged counter-terrorism agency NIA a few days ago, couldn’t get past the district police, who claim to have seized 24 weapons and some ammunition from him.SSP Sandeep Garg said on Thursday that: “Kingpin Vikrant Panwar ‘Vicky Thakur’ has also been arrested among five gangsters.” Congratulating Mohali’s CIA unit on this breakthrough, director general of police (DGP) Gaurav Yadav said: “They have busted one of North India’s biggest arms smuggling networks. Four of its members are from the Bambiha and Lawrence Bishnoi gangs.”Panwar was arrested from hometown Meerut and Deepak from Ambala. Both have led Deepak Rana’s gang. The Mohali police brought them on production warrant, and based on their disclosure, identified three more arms suppliers — Rahul ‘Dana’ of Amritsar, Buta Khan ‘Bagga Khan’ of Malerkotla, and Ravinder Singh ‘Kali’ of Mohali — who are in jail already. They had armed the gangs of Punjab, Haryana, and Chandigarh.Police have, so far, identified four of their customer gangs. The SSP said: “We seized 18 pistols of .32 bore and four of .315 bore, besides two .12-bore rifles based on the leads received from the five arrested gangsters. We seized five country-made guns from Panwar, a .12-bore rifle from Deepak, 10 country-made guns from Rahul, and four weapons each from Buta and Ravinder.The SSP claimed that Prince Chauhan of the Prince Rana gang had received some of these smuggled arms to carry out major strikes in Mohali, Chandigarh, Panchkula, and Ambala, while another gangster whom Deepak Rana had armed had tried to extort money from a trader at Jharmari village. He said: “SP (investigation) Amandeep Singh Brar, SP (rural) Manpreet Singh, and DSP Gursher Singh Sandhu were on the team superised by CIA in-charge Shiv Kumar that busted this module.”