In early March, Delhi Police’s Crime Branch received a tip-off that drugs and fake Indian currency notes were being smuggled into the country from a new destination—Bangkok. As a team headed by Assistant Commissioner of Police KPS Malhotra started investigating, it discovered that a Pakistani agent was the one funnelling the counterfeit rupees through a conduit in the Thailand capital, which in turn was shipping them to Delhi. It was both a lucrative operation as well as an ISI plot to destabilise India’s economy. After a month-long investigation that involved undercover operatives, wire tapping and surveillance, when the Crime Branch officers swooped down on the Indian contacts of the Pak-Thai operation, they were in for a rude shock. In the world of smuggling dominated by men, the culprits were two women—40-year-old Rekha and 36-year-old Sheetal Singh.
Police discovered that they had adopted the unique method of smuggling the fake currency hidden in talcum powder containers. During interrogation, the police discovered that Rekha was the real mastermind of the international cartel being run in connivance with two Pakistanis, Raja and Amjad, who were living in Bangkok. The big bucks involved were enough lure for the godmother of global crime to get involved in smuggling banned drugs like Ketamine, Ephedrine and Ecstasy to India. Rekha and Sheetal began their criminal career by smuggling garments into Bangkok and then bringing electronic goods back to India. They came in contact with the Thai underworld and met Pakistani agents. Neither of them had previous criminal records, though they had been operating for the past six years. In the process, the police discovered they had a new headache. Women in Delhi taking to crime as a big new trend, hard to detect and interrogate. Records reveal around 700 women criminals are operating in the capital, and over 100 run their own gangs, lording over the men.
While the police have been concentrating on male gangsters, they find it tough to apprehend the women, because of scant information and a shortage of women cops. Delhi’s female dons, who travel accompanied by armed male bodyguards, driving fancy cars, living in posh localities, govern wide criminal empires—drug cartels, prostitution rackets, murder squads, kidnapping, and running gangs of robbers and musclemen.
The Scary World of Women Mobsters
■ CRIMES THEY COMMIT: Murder, extortion, robbery, running prostitution rackets, trafficking women from India and abroad, smuggling fake currency and banned substances, peddling drugs through well-organised networks, kidnapping and selling children under NGO cover, running burglary gangs
■ THEIR TRAITS: They are ruthless and cunning, and have no hesitation in wiping out their male counterparts. Many of them come from lower middle-class families, and some of them have inherited criminal empires from men.
■ WHY IS IT SO DIFFICULT TO CATCH THEM? The police have been so far concentrating on male criminal empires and have only recently woken up to the challenge. Setting up surveillance takes time, and there is a shortage of intelligence and women police staff. The women gangsters keep changing their safehouses and use forgers to carve out new names and identities for themselves.
