On June 5, Manjeet Mahal, the jailed strongman from Najafgarh’s Mitraon village, came out of Tihar Jail on a day-long custody parole. It was his daughter’s wedding, and he was being escorted to the venue. Tagging along was Deepak Thakran (30), his nephew.
Police officers now say this meeting with Mahal had enraged gangster Kapil Sangwan alias Nandu – currently based in London – and led to Deepak’s killing on Friday morning when he was out on a morning walk in the fields of Thakran village in Outer Delhi with his seven-year-old daughter.
This was allegedly the third such killing orchestrated by the Nandu gang in the last three months, all because all three deceased were seen hobnobbing with Mahal or were suspected of being in an alliance with him, said police.
In April 2025, a businessman was killed in his Fortuner, allegedly by Sangwan’s henchman, over the suspicion that the deceased was funding Mahal’s gang.
On June 2, Sonepat hotelier Arun Putra Satyawan (25) was gunned by multiple bike-borne shooters in Kharkhari. The police said they allegedly killed Satyawan at Sangwan’s behest, as the deceased had given a statement in court in favour of Lucky, Mahal’s jailed henchman.
With the shooters on the loose, police officers said that they could also be involved in Deepak’s killing.
The rivalry has its roots in 2015, when a close aide of Mahal, Nafe alias Mantri, lent some money to Sangwan’s brother-in-law, Sunil alias Doctor. Sunil was unable to pay Nafe back, and was killed on December 20. Enraged, Sangwan attacked Nafe’s house on December 21 and shot dead his father, Harikishan Singh.
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The police said that Sangwan has since held a grudge, allegedly eliminating people who have any kind of link with Mahal.
“We won’t kill you. We will make you shed tears of blood,” a purported Instagram account of Sangwan had posted on Friday, while claiming that the gang was responsible for Deepak’s killing.
On January 29, 2017, a year after Mahal was arrested by the Delhi Police for the murder of MLA Bharat Singh, his father, Shri Kishan (71), was shot dead at Mitraon village when he was out to buy vegetables.
In 2020, even after Sangwan fled to the UK via Dubai on a fake visa after his parole expired and he was slapped with the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA), the police said his lust for revenge continued.
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In 2021, a gunman of the Nandu gang, Dhankar, was arrested for allegedly plotting Mahal’s courtroom assassination. Last February, Haryana INLD chief Nafe Singh Rathee was killed allegedly by the Nandu gang after photographs of him meeting Mahal cropped up online. In December 2024, the Nandu gang allegedly also executed two members of the Mahal gang in Panchkula, said police.
With three killings already executed by the Nandu gang in the last three months, a police officer said, “It seems he is targeting family members and associates, though he can take out Mahal directly… They had previously tried to kill Mahal, but now they are just executing his family members. They want him to watch everything.”
DCP (Outer North) Hareshwar Swami said that police personnel are stationed near Deepak’s house in Thakran, guarding the village, as the killers – yet to be identified – are still on the loose. “We are still trying to verify the identity of the shooters and whether they have been involved in any other incident,” he added.
