Nasir gang, once the terror of Trans-Yamuna, dismantled: Police claim success in crackdown against organised crime using MCOCA

The Nasir gang is accused of involvement in a range of crimes including contract killing, extortion, and illegal betting. The arrests of these criminals have led to a sharp decline in incidents of targeted shootings, land-grabs, and extortion, police officers said.

“Even after the core gang hierarchy was neutralised, the Inter State Cell of the Crime Branch continued sustained investigation against the remaining absconding members of the syndicate,” Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP),  Crime Branch, Aditya Gautam, said.

“As part of these follow-up actions, three Proclaimed Offenders — Adil and Shamim [who are brothers and were allegedly the principal executors of gang operations under Abdul Nasir] and [alleged international arms trafficker] Saleem Ahmad alias Pistol — have recently been arrested in this case,” Gautam said.

“Saleem Ahmad alias Pistol was a major illegal arms supplier for the Nasir gang as well as several other violent crime syndicates of Delhi-NCR. His role was not limited to local procurement, but involved sophisticated cross-border sourcing of weapons from Pakistan and Nepal, and he (Pistol) was responsible for injecting hundreds of high-calibre pistols into the capital,” Gautam said.

“His (Pistol’s) arrest under MCOCA is a major strategic disruption to the Nepal-Pakistan-Delhi arms trafficking corridor which had been sustaining multiple gang wars and organised crime activities across the NCR,” the officer added.

The Special Cell of the Delhi Police arrested Pistol, a resident of Jafrabad in Delhi, on the India-Nepal border in August. He was a notorious gun-runner who provided gangsters with sophisticated foreign-made weapons, and had allegedly supplied a Turkish-made Zigana pistol that was used in the assassination of the Punjabi singer and rapper Sidhu Moosewala in Mansa, Punjab, in May 2022, sources had told The Indian Express at the time.

The brothers Adil and Shamim had been absconding since MCOCA, the tough anti-gangster law, was invoked against them more than six years ago, and were declared Proclaimed Offenders in 2021. Their arrests have weakened the gang’s remaining support structure, the police said.

Six supplementary chargesheets have been filed so far in addition to the main one, and 15 members of the syndicate have been chargesheeted. Further investigations are under way, the Crime Branch said.