New Delhi: Earlier this year, the Tillu Tajpuria gang made a surprise comeback in the city’s underworld by executing two back-to-back hits targeting the Gogi gang. The high-profile killings prompted law enforcement agencies to track the resurgence of organised crime syndicates in the city.In a major breakthrough, police have now arrested a Delhi Police head constable, Pawan Kumar, the brother of Sunil alias Tillu Tajpuria, the former gang leader who was killed inside Tihar Jail after being stabbed nearly 100 times allegedly by Gogi’s henchmen. Kumar, posted with Reserve Battalion, was running an extortion ring on behalf of the Tajpuria gang.Kumar alias Makkhi came on police’s radar after an extortion FIR was filed on June 27. A real estate businessman alleged that he and his family were facing threats from gang members for a protection sum of Rs 2 crore following a property deal. Police filed the case after CCTV footage corroborated the businessman’s claims.In his complaint, the victim said that his ordeal began after his business partner acquired a 3,200-square-yard plot near Khatu Shyam Mandir on GTK Road in north Delhi last Dec. The deal was funded partly through a Rs 50-lakh loan arranged through Kumar. The loan was repaid with interest by April.However, when the market value of the plot surged to Rs 7 crore and the partners put it up for sale, Kumar allegedly started intimidating them on WhatsApp. He claimed that the initial loan money belonged to a gang leader, Himmat alias Cheeku, who demanded a Rs 2-crore cut from the estimated Rs 3-crore profit, threatening a daily penalty of Rs 2 lakh until the amount was paid.The intimidation escalated into physical trespassing on June 1, when Kumar, accompanied by five armed associates, three of them identified as Tarun, Ravi and Jayant Mann, forced their way into the businessman’s residence in a white Scorpio. Finding only his wife and children at home, they allegedly threatened to eliminate the entire family if the extortion demand was not met.“The suspects warned that the funds were urgently required to manage legal expenses for the gang’s main leader, Amit alias Dabang, currently in Tihar Jail, as well as to fund the run of Himmat, a gang member who recently jumped parole and fled abroad,” the FIR states.The victim initially fled Delhi out of fear for his life. In his statement, he detailed subsequent instances of harassment, including an occasion on June 5 when the accused cop returned to his house with his face covered and another on June 16 when an unidentified youth approached the house and forced him to speak with a jailed gang member, Jitender, on a mobile phone.Sonipat Police has also filed a case against Kumar on charges of extortion, sources said.The rivalry between the Gogi and Tillu Tajpuria gangs stands as one of the most brutal turf wars in Delhi’s history, originating from a student union election dispute at Delhi University’s Swami Shraddhanand College in the early 2010s.What began as campus friction quickly escalated into a decade-long blood feud characterised by extortion, land grabbing and retaliatory killings across outer Delhi. The violence reached a dramatic peak in Sept 2021 when Jitender ‘Gogi’ Mann was shot inside a Rohini courtroom by Tajpuria’s shooters disguised as lawyers. In a revenge attack, Tajpuria was killed in Tihar two years later. But the remnants of both syndicates, allegedly backed by larger transnational criminal networks, continue to clash.