Naveen Ammembala; ExpressBuzz; Monday, October 04, 2010;
BANGALORE: Eleven members of the dreaded Dandupalya gang, who were awarded death sentence for over 16 murder cases, recently sought personal details of the Investigating Officer, DySP Chalapathi of CID, under the Right to Information (RTI) Act.
The gang that had threatened to kill Chalapathi several times, filed an RTI application with the CID, through an advocate, seeking Chalapathi’s family details to threaten him to back out of the case.
The gang — which was arrested in 2001, in Vijayanagar and Banaswadi when he was the inspector — had also threatened to kidnap and kill his family members.
They had even tried to offer half-kg gold and `5 lakh in cash in return for booking petty theft cases against them instead of murder cases.
Several members of the gang — that had attempted to assault even the judge in the open court during the trial — are still operating in and around southern part of India.
Chalapathi, who is now Deputy Superintendent of Police, CID, succeeded in getting death sentence for 11 of them in at least 16 cases.
Speaking to Express on Monday, he said he had faced over 50 inquiries from various agencies during the investigation.
He said the wives of the gang members had filed cases against him, which were submitted to Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, NHRC-Delhi, the then President of India K R Narayanan, Congress president Sonia Gandhi, the then chief minister S M Krishna, the then Central Women Grievance Committee chairman Margaret Alva and other government agencies.
Chalapathi said the cases, which included charges of molestation of the women gang members, were enquired by the agencies and were found to be baseless. He said they were made to divert attention from the investigations.
The notorious gang, wanted in 604 cases of murder and dacoity, targeted elderly people who were alone at home.
They used to zero in on the house and send one of the female gang members to seek water or food and then barged into the house to strike the victim with an arm-length iron rod.
Once the victim was unconscious, they robbed them and even raped the victims irrespective of their sex.
Chalapathi said the gang member who struck first was allowed to rape the victim and this was like a competition among them.
He said while the gang went around robbing people, their wives took care of the booty.
Chalapathi said an accused, Dodda Hanuma, filed a petition with the NHRC saying he was falsely booked in the murder case and was in jail during the time of the incident. Chalapathi said Hanuma also gave his under trial prisoner identification number which was later found to be the number of a lady prisoner.
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