From being a member of the notorious Satte gang to a businessman and police informant, such was the life of Nadir Shah, a gym co-owner who was shot dead by two motorcycle-borne assailants in the posh Greater Kailash area late on Thursday.
Satya Prakash alias Satte was the leader of the bank robbers gang that made headlines in the national capital back in 2009. While Satya Prakash was arrested in an encounter at Green Park, Shah escaped and surrendered days later at a news channel in Noida from where he was arrested by the Delhi police, said a report by The Indian Express.
Later on, Shah became a police informant and also started operating different business, not just in India but also abroad. Apart from the Sharx gym in South Delhi where the he was killed, the 35-year-old had opened several call centres in the national capital and a restaurant in Dubai which eventually failed.
Shah, a class 7 dropout lived in Delhi’s Hazrat Nizamuddin where his father worked as a carpet seller, the report said citing police officials. Shah's family hailed from Afghanistan.
Before entering the crime ring through local drug peddlers, Shah used to work as a carpenter.
A retired police inspector, who was part of the 2009 Green Park encounter team told the publication that Shah joined the Satte gang by tipping them off about jewellery shops, banks to carry out robberies.
"On the day of the Green Park encounter, he was in a car and managed to escape along with an associate named Harpal. Later, like in a scene from a movie, they went to a news studio in Noida to surrender,” the retired inspector said.
Shah was lodged in Tihar jail following his arrest in three cases of robbery and one case of attempt to murder.
After coming out of the jail, he made contacts with the Delhi police and started working as an informant. While helping criminals in surrendering before the police, Shah continued to work as a drug peddler.
According to the report, he managed to open several call centres in Delhi and a restaurant in Dubai in 2019-20 by allegedly investing money belonging to criminals lodged in jails and police officials. After the restaurant shut down due to financial losses, he came back to Delhi and opened his gym.
Two days after the shooting, the probe was handed over to the Delhi Police's Special Cell even as one more person was arrested in this connection, officials said on Saturday.
The arrest of Mohammad Sajid, a resident of northeast Delhi's Jaffrabad, has taken the number of those arrested in this case to five.
As per the initial probe, the police have suspected the involvement of associates of jailed gangsters Lawrence Bishnoi and Hashim Baba in the murder.
Shah was spotted with Deepak Madrasi, a close aide of gangster Ravi Gangwal, which possibly fuelled Bishnoi’s ire and Shah's eventual killing as Bishnoi’s aide Hashim Baba and Gangwal were rivals.