Explained: Who are the Kachha Baniyan gang that inspired Shefali Shah’s Delhi Crime Season 2?

New Delhi September 2 dmanewsdesk: Have you all seen or binged-seen the second season of Netflix’s Delhi Crime and still wondering what inspired the makers for the narrative this around? Keeping the horrific soul of the first season intact, the second season is just as gory and glorified to essay the brutality of today’s truth. This time, the makers have sought inspiration from a gang that operated and supposedly still operates- The Chaddi Banyan Gang or the Kachha Baniyan Gang. The former police commissioner of Delhi Police, Neeraj Kumar, in his book Khaki Files, the inspiration behind Delhi Crime 2, also spoke about this gang recently.

Who is the Kachha Baniyan Gang?

This gang is said to have been operating in the North of India during the early 90s. The moniker is a giveaway. The members of the team only wore undergarments and a baniyan while committing the crimes. A baniyan is a vest or an undershirt usually worn by men, a kachha is an undergarment.  Their crimes included rapes, robberies and even murders. They wore a mask for anonymity that made difficult for the police officials to catch hold of the men behind the crime and the mask. It was a gang of over 5-10 members that carried the crime at one spot, and it’s said that the members became active all the way back in 1987. Apart from Delhi, they are also said to be active in other parts of the country like Rajasthan and Uttarakhand.

The Modus Operandi

The biggest operandi for any criminal can be his awareness and precise sense of observation. That’s what the Kachha Baniyan Gang did. They posed as beggars and laborers in day-time and kept a check on influential families so they could rob them at night. Any form of resistance during the robbery would lead to murders. They killed and attacked with the help of knives and axes.

The Crimes

Aforementioned, Neeraj Kumar, while speaking to PTI recently, spoke in detail about this gang and revealed, “During 1990 and 1991, there were a spate of house dacoities with murder in which people would break into homes and kill every inmate in their sleep. Then they would ransack the house in peace and take away all the valuables. It took us three months to nab the culprits. Since then, no such crimes have taken place in Delhi.”

The book also revealed that they were also given the title of the ‘Moon Gazer’ as they would vanish in thin air at dark, pelting and throwing stones at the officers if a chase ensued. A robber, who was nabbed by Kumar when he was the DCP in Northeast, belonged to the Pardhi tribe. “We worked on the assumption that the ‘kachcha-baniyan’ gang are also Pardhis, an erstwhile criminal tribe who come from Guna,” revealed Kumar.

“An important piece of information that emerged was that they used a certain kind of weapon for offence called ‘daulatiya‘, literally meaning for something to earn ‘daulat’ (wealth) with. It looks like a sickle but is made of wrought iron. It’s a blunt object which they use to break open the homes and also bludgeon people,” he stated.

Source: PTI