The gangster, a resident of Noida’s Dujana village, had 63 criminal cases, including 18 murders, registered against him and several police teams were behind him. His name was in the recently released list of “most dreaded criminals” of the UP government. Out of the seven names of Gautam Buddha Nagar, only Dujana has been released from jail.
ASP and commanding officer of UP STF’s Meerut field unit, Brijesh Singh, who also led the operation, told TOI, “We had received a tip-off that Dujana was present in Meerut’s Jani area near Upper Ganga Canal. unit. surrounded him on an unpaved road with relatively tall bushes and asked him to surrender. But he opened fire on the team with the intention of escaping. In return he was badly injured and died. We brought him to A cache of arms was recovered from.
From selling stolen rods to confronting organized crime
Anil Dujana’s name first appeared in police records in 2002, when he was accused of killing a man in Ghaziabad.
Dujana had no criminal record until then. But in the next few years he would emerge as one of the most dreaded faces of organized crime in NCR and western UP.
Born in Anil Nagar, he took the name of his birthplace – Dujana village in Bisrakh – once he gained notoriety for armed robberies, murders and most importantly, Extortion,
With over 60 criminal cases registered against him, police said Dujana’s name would instill fear among traders and businessmen. It didn’t matter that he was in prison – his gang members carried out his orders from behind bars.
Recently, the UP Police identified him as one of the top three gangsters in the western UP region, the other two being Sundar and Randeep Bhati. Both Sundar and Randeep are in jail.
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Who was Anil Dujana? Know why his name was in the list released by the UP government
Apart from IPC sections, Dujana was also booked under provisions of the Gangster Act and the National Security Act. But before he registered his name in the world of heinous crimes, in the early 2000s, Anil sold stolen iron rods to Sundar Bhati, who had by then emerged as a dreaded gangster in the region.
Dujana seized the opportunity and carried out his operations often using Sundar Bhati’s name.
But it was not for long. Over time, relations between the two soured over shares in the business. Dujana gradually got inclined towards the Randeep Bhati gang and started working for Naresh Bhati as well.
In the initial years, he mostly extorted money from businessmen and was also involved in a few robberies. A Ghaziabad resident was ambushed and killed in 2002 during one such robbery attempt.
With time, Dujana Anil gained popularity. Within a few years, he and his associates had started killing for money.
Dujana was arrested in 2012 and since then spent most of his time in jails. But this did not stop the network of his gang from spreading to the neighboring districts.
Dujana met many criminals in jail. He joined hands with them and used their connections to create terror in Muzaffarnagar, Meerut, Saharanpur and Shamli.
In 2014, he was shifted from Luxor Jail in Greater Noida to Banda Jail in Banda following a series of clashes between his gang and Sundar Bhati.
In 2015, Dujana Anil was accused of masterminding a double murder in Greater Noida in which a police constable was killed.
Outside the jail, Dujana had also joined hands with politics. In 2016, he contested the panchayat elections as an independent and defeated his rival Sangram Singh by over 10,000 votes. The villagers still remember Dujana’s rival campaigning in their village in a bulletproof jacket.
He was arrested again in February 2019. But by then he was married to Priya, a resident of Gitaura.
While in jail, Dujana’s gang was run by his brother Mainpal and others. The gang thrived mostly on extortion. According to earlier police estimates, Anil Dujana used to earn around Rs 50 lakh a day from gang traders and transporters.
One of the most recent cases against him was the alleged kidnapping of Sangeeta Tomar, a key witness against the gangster in a case.
He died in an encounter with UP-STF in Meerut just a month after being released on bail.