Moon Gazer continues……

And the accusatory looks from the family members of the victims and from members of the public gathered at the spot can make you feel like the culprit yourself. Every such case was a personal affront to me, spurring my determination to solve these crimes and arrest the perpetrators at the earliest.

Notably, soon after the Mausam Bhawan incident, a member of the public spotted the criminals running away and alerted a police patrol nearby. The police party chased them and finding the policemen on their heels, the fleeing criminals threw stones at them. Stones had also been found at the scene of the crime at the Saddys’ house. The use of stones to keep policemen in hot pursuit at bay was going to become the turning point in the war between the gang and the south district police.

In the deep recesses of my memory lay the information that stones had been found tied to the waists of two criminals who were caught red-handed in 1989 in east Delhi’s Preet Vihar area. I was then the DCP of the adjoining north-east district. It was quite often the case that criminals operating in one district operated in the neighbouring one as well. Regular sharing of information between the DCSP of the two districts was, therefore, a well-established practice. I was thus privy to the information that stones had been found on the persons of the criminals involved in the Preet Vihar case. A number of heinous cases of armed burglary were worked out based on the disclosures made by the two arrested culprits. I also faintly remembered that, during their interrogation, they had disclosed that they were members of an erstwhile criminal tribe, about whom we had been taught in the National Police Academy.

The case file of the Preet Vihar crime was obtained from the east district and scrutinized. It came to light that the modus operandi in the said case was similar to that followed in the cases in our district, except for the killings.

To be continued….