Prakash Pandey aka Bunty Pandey aka PP, a Chota Rajan aide held in Vietnam

India Crime News Team

Hanoi, November 04, 2010

• Prakash Pandey aka Bunty Pandey aka PP, a former Chota Shakeel Rajan gang member has been nabbed by Interpol in Hanoi, Vietnam.
• Hanoi Interpol has nabbed notorious gangster PP, who was a former sharp shooter of the don Chota Rajan, a defacto gangster of Dawood Ibrahim gang – D-Company.
• Bunty carries a reward of Rs 2 lakh for his arrest.
• He is a resident of a small village of Nainital District in Uttarakhand.
• Police claims that PP is involved in fake Indian currency racket.
• Officials says that Bunty carried out sensational extortion in various parts of country including Delhi, Mumbai, Uttarakhand, Gujrat and Uttar Pradesh.
• He is expected to be brought to Mumbai in a day or two.
• Bunty allegedly made extortion calls to actor Shah Rukh Khan too in the past.
• This defecto gangster also reportedly claimed that he had got ACP Rajbir Singh bumped off.
• Bunty Pandey alias PP is not a new name in the underworld –
• Bunty also claimed that he was responsible for the ACP’s murder and that his two henchmen were present at property dealer Vijay Bhardwaj’s office, where Rajbir was found dead.
• This splinter gang leader also claimed that Rajbir had threatened to kill him in the past, which was why he got rid of him.

• Police sources confirmed that Rajbir’s team had tracked Bunty’s movements on several occasions, when he was working with the special cell and crime branch of Delhi Police.
• Every time gangster Bunty managed to give him the slip and vanished in thin air.
• According to the police, Bunty Pandey was with don Chota Rajan, before he broke away.
• Then he formed his own gang. He started contract killings and extortion for his own gang.
• Bunty carries a reward of Rs 2 lakh and is wanted by the police in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Mumbai and Delhi.
• The Uttarakhand police have declared the reward for his arrest.
• Uttarakhand’s special task force is working in tandem with the Mumbai police to catch the gangster.
• He is also wanted in more than three-dozen cases of extortion and other heinous crimes in Uttarakhand and for a low-intensity blast in Haldwani in early 2000.
• Pandey is said to be a master of disguise, and giving slip for many years to the agencies.
• The police in different states has gunned many of his associates down but Bunty has been able to dodge arrest for a decade.
• Few years back, Uttarakhand police managed to trace two of his girlfriends, but the don got a hint of the raid and the girls managed to escape.
• He operates from a distant location outside India via satellite phones and Internet.
• His mobile surveillance threw up many names, including girls from Cambodia and Nepal. A senior police official informed.
• This officer says that Bunty had an innovative way of trapping his victims.
• Bunty used to lure his victims by placing newspaper advertisements and invite fresh faces for a career in acting. He then abducted the budding but wealthy actors for ransom.
• The gangster made his foray into crime in Almora district where his father, Laxmi Dutt Pandey, a former Army Subedar, had settled at Khilonia village after retirement.
• A senior officer of Uttarakhand STF said that Bunty Pandey started selling illicit liquor in Almora. He ran away from home after his mother died and his father remarried.
• He also said that Bunty started with petty criminal activities in the area and soon started extortion activities in the region. He used to take money from mining contractors.
• When Bunty absconded from Uttarakhand, he came into contact with the D-Company.
• Bunty then got a chance to rise up the ranks swiftly when Dawood Ibrahim and Chota Rajan fell out.
• When Rajan departed with D-Company, Bunty chose to go with Chota Rajan.
• It is also said that Bunty executed the attack on Chota Shakeel in August 2001, along with associates – Harish Shah and Bharat Nepali – but failed.
• UP STF officials says that the PP gang is synonymous with fear in Kumaon and other hilly districts.
• PP Gang has an excellent network of informers and is reaping riches from the property boom in Uttrakhand too.
• Police officials says that Bunty’s modus operandi is simple – he demands small sums, which builders, businessman, mine operators can afford to pay.