Ghaziabad,August 04:Hitman charged `10- 25 lakh for killing his targets.THE POLICE officer was armed with an AK- 47, just in case. But as it turned out, Anil Kaparwan, a Special Operations Group ( SOG) officer, didn’t have to pull the trigger.
He only shot his mouth off: “ If you fire three rounds, I will respond with 30 from my AK- 47.” That was enough to freeze Jaggu Pehelwan and make his trigger- happy finger go numb on the Italian pistol he was pointing at the officer. Kaparwan’s men pounced on the 120kg frame promptly, ending a more than 13- year manhunt for the hired- killer.
Those who know Pehelwan would say his arrest was a bit of an anti- climax.
With the same Italian pistol, Pehelwan has, unofficially, killed close to 165 people — people, including politicians, he killed for money, people he suspected were police informers and his own gang members whom he did not trust.
In his long contract- killing career that began in 1998, he pulled the trigger faster than the bullets that flew out of his pistol, a police officer said. But on Monday, he just gave himself up, surrounded by a dozen SOG men. Kaparwan described the arrest. Pehelwan was in a car with some gang members.
Aware of his movement, the dozen SOG men led by Kaparwan waited for him near Bikaner Morh in Sahibabad on Monday night. The policemen were in three vehicles.
“ When they saw us they opened fire. They fired five rounds. But we succeeded to catch one of the gang members. Pehelwan threatened to shoot me with his revolver,” Kaparwan said. After a pause, he added: “ I said if you fire thrice, I will respond with 30 rounds from my AK- 47.” Pehelwan meekly surrendered.
Four of his accomplices — Vinod Nagar, Sunil Singh, Manoj Kumar Singh and Rajesh Kumar — were also arrested.
At the senior superintendent of police’s ( SSP) office on Wednesday, he was unrepentant.
“ I will kill all my rivals once I’m out of jail,” he was shouting.
“ We have accessed a list of phone numbers of people who Pehelwan was in touch with, which we are now studying . We will also arrest everyone who had given him a contract,” SSP ( Ghaziabad ) Raghuvir Lal said.
Pehelwan charged from ` 10 lakh to ` 25 lakh for a murder. Recently, he was contracted for ` 1.2 crore to carry out 24 murders.
Pehelwan entered the world of crime in 1998 when he was hired for the first time to kill Hans Kumar Jain, a businessman of Gokulpuri in Delhi.
“ Though he is officially wanted in close to 100 murder cases, he is suspected to have killed nearly 165 people. He has been in and out of jail 20- 25 times. But every time he obtained bail, as no one dared to depose against him in court.
There are hardly any witnesses against him,” Kaparwan said.
Even in Nithora, his village in Ghaziabad’s Loni, no one speaks against him, forget deposing in court. Pehelwan had around 40 men working for him in Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Haryana and Uttarakhand.
The hired killer, the police said, harboured ambitions of contesting the assembly elections. His wife is the Nithora village chief.
She was elected last year, unopposed as none from the village mustered courage to contest against her. He has five children, three daughters and two sons.
As a hired killer, Pehelwan murdered a hotel owner in Delhi’s Safdarjung Enclave in 2003. In 2008, he murdered two realtors, Satish Yadav and Dharemdar Yadav, in Ghaziabad’s Kavi Nagar.
In the same year, he murdered transporter Rupesh Chaudhary.
In 2009, he murdered a person named Amit Bhardwaj after barging into Swami Nandlal Hospital in Shalimar Garden.
Last month, he murdered Sachin Chaudhary, the councillor of Loni Nagar Palika Parishad, as he saw him as his business rival.
THE BUTCHER OF GHAZIABAD
As a hired killer, Pehelwan murdered a hotel owner in Delhi’s Safdarjung Enclave in 2003. In 2008, he murdered two realtors, Satish Yadav and Dharmendar Yadav, in Ghaziabad’s Kavi Nagar
In the same year, he murdered transporter Rupesh Chaudhary.
In 2009, he murdered a person named Amit Bhardwaj after barging into Swami Nandlal Hospital in Shalimar Garden
Last month, he murdered Sachin Chaudhary, the councillor of Loni Nagar Palika Parishad, as he saw him as his business rival
In 2008, he killed influential political leader Sanjay Valmiki.
The duo of Rupesh and Pinto Tyagi , both of whom had political ties, were Pehalwan’s next targets
ON HIS HIT- LIST
Aulad Ali, a local Samajwadi Party leader
Yashveer Bhadana, building material supplier in Sahibabad
Gajji Gurjar, a cable operator in Khoda. He wanted to end his supremacy in the trade