DNA Exclusive: Know thy neighbour, he might be a gangster!

New Delhi: What if one morning you walk back to your home to find indiscriminate firing going on? What if those bullets are fired by someone living in your own neighbourhood? This is exactly what happened in Kolkata. On June 9, indiscriminate firing started in a residential area of ​​New Town, one of the safest areas of the city. The complex houses about 22,000 flats with over one lakh people residing in it. Naturally, the people were scared.

Zee News Anchor Aman Chopra on Thursday (June 10) narrated the recent event that occurred in Kolkata to explain the risk of not knowing one’s neighbour.

In the Kolkata incident, when the noise of the bullets stopped, people came to know that two big gangsters from Punjab were hiding among them in the society. The two gangsters were identified as Jaipal Bhullar and Jaspreet Jassi. The wanted criminals had five pistols and live cartridges. No one in the society had any idea that they were harbouring such notorious criminals.

This incident throws light on an important issue. Nowadays, most people are not acquainted with their neighbours. And this can be very dangerous.

28 percent of people in India’s urban areas live in rented houses. People coming from villages to cities for jobs, students coming for studies and many families live in different cities for various reasons. Before renting out a place, police verification of the tenants is required. But this practice is often not taken seriously.

In Delhi in 2020, 3,440 cases were registered against landlords because they did not get the police verification of their tenants done. Apart from this, cases were registered against 226 people who did not get the police verification done for the people working in their houses.

It is possible that today many of you are feeling that you have also done this at some point or the other. But imagine what can happen if a terrorist gets a house on rent.

The risk of improper police verification is quite worrying.

A few days ago a survey was conducted on the brokers who offer house rentals in Mumbai. It was found in this survey that only 20 percent of the brokers get the police verification of the tenants done. This carelessness can have dire consequences.

In March this year, notorious gangster Kuldeep Mann alias Fazza was hiding with a weapon in a residential apartment in Delhi. The people living in the neighborhood had no idea that a notorious criminal was living here, who had escaped from the police custody three days ago. However, the police tracked him and this gangster was killed in an encounter.

In another incident last year, Delhi gangster Jitendra Mann alias Gogi was hiding in a residential area of ​​Gurugram. Even then the people of the area had no information about it. They came to know about it only when gunshots were heard during the encounter there.

The same happened with the Batla House encounter of 2008. In September 2008, four terrorists were hiding in the Batla House building of Jamia Nagar, Delhi. These terrorists had carried out bomb blasts in Delhi. After the blasts, all these terrorists were living peacefully in the rented flat. On September 19, when the police got information about their hideout, an encounter took place.

All these incidents bring us to the same question – How well do you know your neighbour?

If only, police verification had been done properly, the Kolkata shootout and other incidents like that could have been avoided.

Live TV