Woman held in Gurgaon for taking over gangster husband's extortion racket after his arrest

Police in Gurgaon claimed to have dismantled a dreaded extortion racket at Khandsa Mandi area with the arrest of a woman named Twinkle who has been identified as the head of ‘Kaushal’ gang since all of the other gang members including her husband Amit Dagar have already been jailed. As per cops, this marked the second time Twinkle has faced arrest, with her earlier apprehension in July also related to extortion, though she was granted bail in August. It has been revealed that Twinkle, a law-graduate in her late 20s hailing from a small business family in Jacobpura, was initially introduced to Amit Dagar, a close associate of Kaushal, in 2016 through a friend involved with another gang member named Sandeep, alias Bandar. During that time, Kaushal, Dagar, Sandeep, and their associates were laying low due to their involvement in the alleged killing of a rival named Mahesh Attack. They frequently changed their locations and relied on women’s help to rent places discreetly. Sandeep, in need of assistance, asked his girlfriend to find a friend, leading to Twinkle’s involvement in the gang’s activities. Twinkle and Dagar’s relationship deepened, and they eloped within a few months, eventually marrying. Despite Dagar’s attempts to evade arrest, they moved from place to place and had two children together. Twinkle began taking on an increasingly prominent role within the gang in 2018, particularly in managing the extortion operations at Khandsa mandi. Twinkle, who possessed an agent’s license at the mandi, allegedly manipulated wholesale vegetable prices, forcing other agents to sell them at inflated costs. The difference between the inflated prices and the actual costs was siphoned off by the gang. It’s estimated that the gang was making more than Rs 35 lakh each month from the mandi. Earlier this month, 13 members of the Kaushal gang were arrested as part of a crackdown on one of the NCR’s largest extortion rackets operating at the Khandsa mandi. The National Investigation Agency had previously alerted the police about this racket, which served as a key revenue source for the gang. The vendors at the mandi had been reluctant to cooperate due to fears of reprisals, leading the police to pose as vegetable sellers undercover to gather evidence on the gang’s operations. Apart from Twinkle’s role in price manipulation, the gang had monopolized the sale of polythene bags and the supply of electricity through generators to vendors and traders at the mandi. On Thursday, Twinkle was produced in court and subsequently sent to judicial custody, facing charges under various sections of the Indian Penal Code related to extortion, common intention, and criminal conspiracy.