NEW DELHI: August 11, 2007: Unidentified bikers attack South Delhi resident Tarveen Suri with acid and kerosene and set her on fire, just outside her bungalow. With 95% burns, Suri dies in the hospital few weeks later. Police suspect contract killing.
December 19, 2007: Engineering student Deepak Sherawat shot dead by two unidentified assailants in South Delhi. Police suspect contract killing.
April 7, 2008: Businessman Arun Gupta shot dead by unidentified bikers in Kalkaji, South Delhi in broad daylight. Police suspect contract killing.
April 8: Former Virgin Atlantic air hostess Sheeba Thomas shot dead by three unidentified bikers in Noida. Police suspect contract killing.
It’s not just the suspicion of contract killings that is common to these cases. Another thing in common and perhaps an issue equally fatal as the murder itself is that in each of these cases the police suspect that the ‘contract’ to get rid of the victim was given by people well known to the victim.
In Suri’s case, which remains unsolved even after nine months, the police suspect the involvement of her husband. In Gupta’s case, the police suspect that the crime was committed on the instructions of his brothers-in-law over some property dispute. In Thomas’s murder, the police are still not ruling out the possible involvement of her boyfriend who had been in a live-in relationship with the 24-year-old girl.
Contract killings have not been alien to Delhiites but what is startling is the fact that they are no longer executed to simply settle scores in business or political rivalries but have even crept into family issues.
A senior Gurgaon police official believes that over time contract killers have also become “sophisticated and smart.”
“They are no longer the rustic gangs from UP villages who usually worked under the patronage of some local politician or businessman. With landowners from Delhi’s fringe villages striking gold with the property boom, sufficient money has been pumped into these areas to fulfill the fancy for foreign-made guns. This explains the proliferation of guns in the NCR,” said the official.
AS Ganesh, senior superintendent of police, Noida explains, “the system of gangs who specialised in contract killings isn’t very common now. Young boys from fringe villages have taken over this mantle. They don’t use country-made pistols like their
predecessors. They have foreign-made revolvers and ride bikes or even drive swanky cars.”
A senior Delhi police official says contract killers can be hired for a paltry Rs 10,000 from various places in the NCR. But the amount “to get the job done” could run into lakhs depending on the profile of the “target, risk involved in the crime and the repercussions of the case.”
y_puneet@dnaindia.net
