Gangs of the World

Every crime syndicate, small or big, has a culture of its own. It would execute crime in a particular manner, make public appearances in a certain fashion and even behave with gang members according to a predefined code. That’s what makes them interesting, and identifiable. Here’s a compilation of the most…

Meerut Gang: The trio of Mohd Izaz, Ali Mohd and Rasheed was recently arrested in Delhi with a kilo of gold jewellery and ₹4.5 lakh cash that had stolen from a house in Hyderabad. The gang in peculiar fashion would travel to Hyderabad in third or fourth week of every month, stay in cheap lodges and moved in autorickshaws. They would randomly walk into any society they passed by, look for locked flats, pack everything they can into a gunny bag, take a train back to Delhi and distribute the booty in Meerut. So that the members don’t cheat eachother, the gunny bags were sealed with a red plaster, so that if anyone tried to open the bag, the other members would know. They had burgles 15 flats over a period of 18 months.

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Quotation Gangs: Earlier this year, a girl was arrested in Pathanamthitta district of Kerala for carrying out a brutal attack on a youth. The girl was allegedly a member of quotation gang – Kerala’s homegrown crime syndicates that hires college students, especially girls, to execute deadly crimes, financial frauds and money laundering. Infact, even a popular telly actor is being investigated for her role in the syndicate that moves around on bikes or ill-maintained SUVs, fights it out on the streets for territories and basically operate in the manner that supari gangs do in Mumbai.

Kacha Baniyan Giroh: Dressed in vest and underwear, the members of this dacoit gang would attack on the head of the victim as soon as they entered the house. They were extremely violent and would mostly brutally kill their targets. Though they were most dreaded in Uttar Pradesh, according to reports they had even struck in New Delhi in 2006. Since most of the members have now been arrested, the gang is now non-existent.

Kala Kaccha Giroh: Also known as Kale-Kachchewale or Kale Kachche gang, the organized gang was involved in possibly all forms of crime like rape, extortion and murder in Punjab, Haryana and Jammu, India. They would either wear black underwear or police uniform to dodge policemen who would come to chase them after the gangs executed its attack.

White Zen Gang: The gang in their peculiar style would keep a gap of two months in their next and previous strike and would target people who would carry humongous amount of hard cash. The gang was extremely active in Punjab in 2008.

Kanjar Gang: They group had conducted a series of robberies in Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra. When its members were arrested, they confessed to have used yellow beacon light car to execute the acts.

Bawaria Gang: Whenever the rainy season would come, people in and around Kanpur would start dreading the Bawariya Gang that would only strike during monsoons as they considered it lucky for committing crime. The tribal gang became so infamous at one point of time that people who used to stay in the outskirts of Kanpur shifted to more populated townships.

The Yakuza: The face of organized crime in Japan is Yakuza family that is also known as Borykudan, which literally means violence group. Its members strictly follow the codes set by the higher ranked members and if anyone disobeys his boss, he has to sever the top of his little finger infront of his boss as an apology. The ranks depend on the complexity of tattoos that are made using extremely painful traditional ways using bamboo needles. The group is unanimous leader in corporate blackmailing and prostitution.

Jamaican Posse: They love to use highly sophisticated assault rifles on live targets, and they often demonstrate their ruthlessness by killing people with laundry irons, butcher knives, and even vacuum cleaner. The people fear them because they are well-connected amongst the higher ranked people in the system.

Aryan Brotherhood: They are not just popular because they are responsible for roughly almost 25 per cent of the death in the US prisons, but also because they openly express their fearlessness to 1even the harshest form of punishment by constantly killing or assaulting fellow prisoners. Anyone who wants to join this group must kill a fellow prisoner, the act which is infamously known as ‘ blood in, blood out’. Anyone who betrays the group either ends up of the other side of the life or in the hospital.

18th Street Gang: The street gang has close to 65,000 active gang members who are active in 120 cities in 37 the United States. Be it the street-level sale of drugs or contract killing, assaults, illegal sale of weapons, copyright infringement, extortion, human trafficking, illegal immigration, kidnapping, vandalism, prostitution or robbery, they have been investigated in every possible form of crime. Any one who doesn’t follow his leader is beaten for 18 seconds or even killed. Usually number 18 is printed on their attire, which is of sports teams such as the Los Angeles Dodgers, Los Angeles Lakers and Oakland Raiders. Members use the symbols XV3, XVIII, 666, 99,(9+9=18), and 3-dots in their graffiti and tattoos and only wear black and blue colours. It’s also called the Children Army because they hire school kids.

The Mungiki: With their base in slums of Nairobi, this brutal syndicate comprises a lakh of members who are known to take a blood bath, behead their victims and encourage forceful circumcision of women. Unlike a lot gangs who are either identified by tattoos or the cloths they wear, Mungiki member carry a human head on top of a stick to represent themselves.

From the November 2012 issue of FHM India.