Police busts gang that targeted elderly women

NEW DELHI: The Delhi Police on Saturday busted the “Irani gang” in the national capital by arresting its mastermind and his accomplice that targeted elderly people by masquerading as police and government officials. The key accused Sikander Ali alias Sajid Ali, 37 years old, resident of Mumbai’s Irani colony along with his other co accused, 29 years old Akbar Ali was arrested by the officials of the Dwarka district of Delhi Police and slapped with charges of cheating, forgery and criminal act.
According to the Delhi Police, the accused were impersonating as police officials from the crime branch and approaching elderly women to deposit their gold jewellery for its safe custody with the ‘police’ and later swapping the original jewellery with fake jewelleries before handing them back to these elderly women. The Irani gang which primarily belongs from the Irani colony in Mumbai is notoriously famous for their job of robbery, cheating and forgery. The gang’s modus operandi for years have been such where they impersonate as police or government officials and target elderly women to take away their belongings and gold jewellery and swap them with fake ones.
The Delhi police was able to nab them after at least three such incidents were reported in Delhi South East district of Dwarka and complaints from elderly women registered in the Dwarka North police station. After complaints the police got into action and formed a team of special staff of the Dwarka district to nab the perpetrators of the crime.
This team of police officials visited the crime scene and after analysing the CCTV footages, the police found out their location in Noida from where these two accused were arrested.
DCP Dwarka Harsha Vardhan told The Sunday Guardian that this particular incident happened during the election day in Delhi where an elderly woman in her 80s were stopped by two men and was told that they were police officers from the Delhi Crime Branch. “This woman who was going to the polling station was told by these impersonating accused that some robbery had taken place in this area and therefore she should safely deposit her jewellery with them and take it back from them while going back home. The jewellery was swapped with fake ones wrapped in a white cloth and handed over to the women while she was going back. After she reached home, she realised that her original jewellery was stolen by these two individuals.” DCP Harsha Vardhan told this newspaper.
Harsha Vardhan also said that there are two more accused from this gang who are in the police radar and searches are on for them and would also be soon nabbed.
The Irani Gang was active in Delhi for quite some time when several cases of such incidents of robbery and theft conducted by them used to be reported from across the city, but for the last two years their activities had gone off radar and it was believed that they have shifted their operations from Delhi, until this new case had come to light from Dwarka.
The police has, however, recovered two gold bangles, 30 artificial bangles being used by accused persons to exchange with original gold bangles. Two motorcycles being used in commission of crime, two mobile phones being used in commission of crime, six stolen scooty and six stolen motorcycles. According to the police, their arrest has also solved 20 other cases of similar crimes registered in various other police stations across the city.