New Delhi: The arrest of Deepak Pahal alias Boxer has lifted the veil on a brewing nexus between criminal gangs in Delhi-NCR and human trafficking cartels of the West. This network, it is learnt, has been facilitating the passage of wanted gangsters trying to flee the country, creating a major hurdle for Indian investigating agencies.
Boxer, Delhi-NCR’s most-wanted gangster who was nabbed by the Delhi Police’s Special Cell in Mexico earlier this month and brought to India, had fled the country through this very channel, sources in the Delhi Police told ThePrint. Like some other gangsters, he aimed to reach the United States and planned to run his gang from abroad, complicating matters for Indian authorities on the lookout for him.
The network facilitates these criminals’ travels via the ‘donkey route’ (illegal method of entering a foreign country, through agents in India, internationally placed operators or ‘donkers’ as they are called, and associates who handle payments for this form of stealth travel through hawala transfers.
The communication between all of them takes place through various calling apps and, more often, through the use of multiple handsets (colloquially termed ‘dabba banna’), which makes zeroing in on the callers’ locations almost like finding a needle in a haystack. Over 1 lakh calls were analysed over eight months by the investigating team led by Inspector Gagan Bhaskar to put a finger on Boxer’s locations.
The Delhi Police — in coordination with central and international agencies (FBI legal attaché offices in New Delhi and Mexico City) — arrested Boxer after he was detained in Mexico’s Cancun area. Once a junior national boxing champion, the Haryana native had fled the country in January on a fake passport he got from Bareilly.
Boxer had allegedly been running key operations of the Gogi gang after Jitendra Mann alias Gogi was shot dead inside Delhi’s Rohini Court complex in 2021.
“This trend of wanted gang members escaping the country has emerged in the last couple of years. Mostly its people who don’t qualify for skilled category visas and use donkers to reach their destination. They even sell their land and other assets to pay the donkers,” Special Commissioner of Police (Special Cell) HS Dhaliwal told ThePrint.
He further said that since last year, the Special Cell had ramped up its crackdown on gang members, which has sent these criminals into a frenzy. “In order to avoid the law and because of their knowledge of extradition, all of them want to flee to western countries. However, with Boxer’s arrest, they have all got a strong message that the Indian police will nab them wherever they are, even though it might take a little while. This is an end to their impunity.”
Of Delhi’s 10 most wanted, at least two absconding gangsters apart from Boxer have escaped out of the country in the last 2-3 years — Kapil Sangwan alias Nandu (2021), and Himanshu Bhau (2022).
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Travel tourism & trafficking
If it wasn’t for the intricate network of donkers, agents and associates — some sitting in Indian jails and others abroad — Pahal alias Boxer probably wouldn’t have been able to make it out of the country, sources in the Delhi Police told ThePrint.
The sources further said that the agents based in India (who connect gangsters to donkers) and the donkers abroad usually have side businesses of travel tourism through which they establish the network in tandem with human trafficking cartels.
Over a span of three months, Boxer took some eight flights and made it to Mexico via El Salvador and Guatemala through donkers, on-board cars, boats and mini trucks. The task at hand for the Delhi Police Special Cell was to prevent him from escaping to the US as that would bring up complications of asylum and extradition.
The US has been facing the issue of migrants illegally entering its territory from Venezuela, Cuba, and Mexico. Human trafficking cartels smuggle a large number of migrants, many of them also from India, through dangerous routes via jungles and through the sea on boats, to reach America.
The escape plan
Boxer’s escape plan was at least four months in the making. This was soon after some key members of the Lawrence Bishnoi-Kala Jathedi-Hashim Baba and Boxer alliance had escaped to the US, Portugal and Australia over the last two years.
“After Gogi’s murder, Boxer was the frontman of his gang and the police crackdown on gangsters created panic in their minds. Those sitting in jails and outside the country coordinated and alerted their contacts across Delhi, UP and Haryana to prepare Boxer’s documents,” a police officer told ThePrint on condition of anonymity, adding that these gangsters often have thorough knowledge of the legal complications of when a fugitive takes asylum in another country, so they immediately ask their associates to arrange for donkers.
The officer further said: “Donkers have another network with human traffickers…The route was also charted out keeping in mind which countries have visa on paper and visa on arrival to make the escape easier.”
In the last eight months, multiple hideouts of Boxer were raided across five states. On 6 January, Boxer flew to Kazakhstan’s Almaty via Dubai from Kolkata, from Almaty to Istanbul, then to Panama City, and thereafter to Port of Spain in February. From Port of Spain, he flew to Suriname capital Paramaribo, and flew back to Panama City in February-end. From there, he took another flight to San Jose, then Costa Rica, and finally reached El Salvador on 1 March.
While Boxer has at least 13 cases registered against him in Delhi, sources said that they suspect his involvement in at least 30 murders and attempted murders of rival gangs. The police started picking up some of his friends and associates, and also questioned some lodged in jails. It was from those who helped him get his fake passport that the investigating agencies got to know about his plans of reaching the US.
“With the help of RAW, MHA, MEA, and CBI, an LOC (lookout circular) was opened. Green, Blue and Red Corner notices were also issued to catch the fugitive,” another source in the police force said. In March, an open non-bailable warrant was also issued against the 27-year-old fugitive.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)
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