India's most wanted petroleum product smuggler lands in police net

The Delhi Police's Special Cell has arrested most wanted petroleum product smuggler and member of the notorious Kala Jathedi-Lawrence Bishnoi-Goldy Brar gang in the national capital, officials said.

The accused, identified as Sunil alias Banda, had jumped the interim bail in September 2020 and was wanted in 19 cases.

According to a senior police officer, a team of special cell unit was already working to apprehend the wanted and desperate criminals of the notorious Kala Jathedi-Lawrence Bishnoi-Goldy Brar gang since last few months and on October 6, a desperate shooter of the gang, Rakesh Raka, was arrested.

"The name of Sunil Banda was revealed during the interrogation of Raka, who used to help the accused financially and was also involved in an extortion case of Karol Bagh in which the accused persons had demanded Rs 5 crores from the victim," said the officer.

"On October 17, specific inputs were received that Sunil Banda would be coming to Burari area in the evening to meet one of his associates. Accordingly, a team was constituted and deployed there and the accused was nabbed," said the officer.

"Banda has a long criminal history and had also served a jail term of five years at Tihar prison. In the year 2016, when he was in Jhajjar Jail, he met other criminals and gradually started managing the whole syndicate of oil theft," said the officer.

His associate Deepak Rathi would procure all the information about the location of oil pipelines through one Nepali Pipli and another Harish used to do work of welding in the pipeline for fitting the valve.

The responsibility of selling oil was with Sunil Banda and Dinesh Rathi. After selling the oil, Sunil Banda along with his associates Dinesh Rathi and Harish used to give a certain sum of money to the other team members for each 20,000 liter theft and the remaining proceeds from sale was distributed among the three.