Wannabe 'Dawood' arrested for burglaries across India

A man who burgled or robbed financial institutions across India with his associates by posing as vegetable transporters was arrested from north Delhi’s Kashmere Gate, police said on Sunday.

Thirty two-year-old Intezar liked to introduce himself as younger brother of Dawood Ibrahim and was popularly known as ‘Chota Don’. According to a senior police officer, Intezar looked up to Dawood since his childhood and always carried a photograph of the underworld don to motivate himself. 

The gang had allegedly broken into a Syndicate Bank at Karnataka’s Haveri district during the end of January this year and made away with cash and gold worth over Rs 1 crore. They had managed to break the windows as well as the strong room of the bank with gas cutters and rods to implement their plan. Though the Karnataka police came close to nabbing them, they had managed to escape.

Delhi police were requested to help in nabbing the gang after similar incidents surfaced from other South Indian towns. Police learnt of his presence in Delhi and arrested him from the interstate bus terminal in Kashmere Gate on Friday.

The gang has been active for long, even killing a security guard while looting a bank in UP’s Muradabad district in 2003. He was soon caught and briefly jailed. On being released, he hired some unemployed youths from his village in UP’s Badaun district and began targeting financial institutions located near vegetable and fruit wholesale markets.

He bought a truck that helped carry his associates, who posed as the staff of a vegetable transporter, the role he donned himself. The vehicle also helped carry fruits and vegetables under which they concealed the house-breaking equipments and gas cutters as well as the burgled items.

Police said he has disclosed that several of his gang members are currently at a village at Rajasthan’s Jaipur, where they have identified a bank as their next target and are waiting for the right opportunity to strike. Efforts are on to arrest his associates, police added further.