As a part of the recent special drive conducted by Delhi Police’s Special Cell to neutralize the threat posed by organized gangs active in the national capital and the neighbouring states, a total of 16 gangsters have been arrested, the police said on Saturday.

The major crackdown on different gangs followed after a surge in organized criminal activity was noticed by the police, and the specialised unit began to pursue these crime syndicates, invoking a large network of intelligence, as the said gangs and their nefarious designs were found to be operated from gangsters lodged in jails and also foreign soil based criminal leaders.

According to police, a total of 10 pistols and 56 live bullets have also been recovered from the arrested gang members.

In the operation, a team of Special Cell, led by Inspectors Vinay Pal, Arvind Singh and Manoj Kumar nabbed five gang members from Delhi and Jalandhar, Punjab on June 21, Friday, while two pistols and 12 live cartridges were seized from their possession.

Three of the arrested persons are shooters, while the other two, including a woman, were engaged in recruiting gang members through social media and passing on instruction to the shooters on behalf of syndicate leaders and also arranged weapons.

The shooters had already conducted recce of a target and their arrest has averted threat to life of a reputed businessman in Delhi, a senior police official added.

Similarly, three criminals of a notorious criminal gang were arrested, while one country made pistol and five live cartridges were recovered from them, the police said, adding that one of the arrested gang members was wanted in a murder case, and all three of them were previously involved in cases of murder, attempt to murder, Arms Act.

It was on the intervening night of Friday- Saturday, another Special Cell team arrested five more shooters of a notorious criminal gang, recovering 4 sophisticated pistols of different bores with 30 live rounds of ammunition.

Four of them have previous involvements in criminal cases, including attempt to murder, robbery, extortion and Arms Act, while the other two were wanted in a case of firing related to extortion in Rohini, Delhi, and a case of attempt to murder in Rewari, Haryana.

Meanwhile, another team arrested a henchman of a gang from Faridabad on June 15, with a country made hand gun and five bullets, and talking of the history, this man was previously involved in 20 cases of attempt to murder, extortion, gangster act, robbery, Arms Act etc. in Delhi, Haryana and UP.

Two more gang members were arrested by the cell with 2 single shot pistols of .315 bore, along with 4 live cartridges.

In the entire anti- gangster drive, the monitoring by the special cell was done through technical means to identify communication patterns of the criminals, since most of the surge in these criminal activities has its origin through foreign soil.

According to Deputy Commissioner of Police, Special Cell, Amit Kaushik, it was noticed that gang leaders who have settled abroad in supposedly safe havens or incarcerated in different jails recruit juveniles, or young boys without prior records to avoid detection.

The gangsters usually lure these youths with immature minds in incidents of firing and even murders and later dump them for they easily manage to find more such youth available for exploitation, the official added.

Further probe is underway in cases registered in this regard, the police official added.