Ruthless Kachha Baniyan Gang Active In Delhi
Their activities were especially notorious during the late 1990s and early 2000s. These days, they are striking Delhi residents.
On a night in July 2025, a businessman in South Delhi’s Neb Sarai area was fast asleep with his family on the top floor of his two-floor house. Around 11 pm, three shadowy figures crept towards the building.
They were dressed in a ‘uniform’: underwear and vests, their faces wrapped in white cloth.
The next morning, his hand on his head, the businessman was sitting at the Neb Sarai police station to file a complaint.
“Over Rs 1.5 crore worth of jewellery was stolen from his house,” said a police officer. “He was asleep when it happened, and his room was locked from the outside by the burglars.
When we checked CCTV footage, we were taken aback — the thieves wore just undergarments. They were the Kachha Baniyan gang,” he said.
The case remains unsolved. It was the biggest of the four heists by the Kachha Baniyan gang in South Delhi last year, said police.
The remaining three — two in Malviya Nagar in June and September 2025, and one in Hauz Khas in July 2025 — were solved, but the amount stolen was significantly low.
Come 2026, the gang has struck once again in South Delhi. On May 1, six men in their undergarments crossed the Vijay Mandal park in Malviya Nagar to enter the upscale Sarvodaya Enclave.
Police said while three waited in the park, the other three entered the balcony of B-250, the house of businessman Praveen Kumar. CCTV footage showed them locking both bedrooms where Praveen’s family was asleep.
They then jogged around the halls, opened some drawers, and, within four minutes, escaped with jewellery worth Rs 1.5 to Rs 2 lakh, police officers said. Praveen only realised it the next day, when he woke up to a locked door.
This time, police managed to track them down to Jahanpanah forest in Ambedkar Nagar. The accused, however, were armed and fired at the police team.
“When officers reached the area, accused Nirmal Pardi, Devin, and Samar opened fire at them. The police team fired in retaliation, and bullets hit the three on the legs,” an officer said.
Police arrested the trio and their accomplices — Kaake, Krish and Shivaji — from the spot. All six are from Madhya Pradesh’s Guna.
CCTV footage in last year’s burglaries, seen by The Indian Express, reveals similarities: apart from the uniform of choice, the robbers enter localities through parks, they are always on foot, and are good at climbing up pipes.
“They usually choose localities that are either near a decent-sized park or a forest cover. It gives them a chance to vanish in the dark in case they are chased. They are always on foot…
They cross boundary walls, climb up pipes to enter balconies and flee after the heist through the same route,” a police officer said.
Police said the gang was notorious in Delhi in the 90s, and some of their burglaries even ended in murder. In 1991, they killed two people during a robbery in Lodhi Colony. In 2014, they killed a 21-year-old woman in Narela.
According to police, members of the Kachha Baniyan gang mostly belong to the Pardhi community, a nomadic tribe from Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra.
“Guna is the main hub of the Pardhi community( Pardhis are a nomadic Scheduled Tribe Community in India primarily found in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh), a hunter-gatherer tribe.
Most members of the Kachha Baniyan gang are from here,” said a police officer.
A police officer, who was involved in a three-month-long raid in Guna for Kachha Baniyan gang members in 2022, after they had looted Rs 2 crore worth of jewels from a house in Defence Colony, said the main villages housing these robbers are Khera, Bila Khedi and Ratnagir.
“They don’t really rob for money. It’s like a family trade for them. Their fathers and grandfathers used to rob trains… as kids, most of these men went with them to learn the ‘craft’,” claimed a police officer.
“Even after such high-profile heists, they live in tents, not even a proper kuccha house. They drink at night and roam around in the morning. Once money becomes scarce, they head to the city,” he added.
The members don’t operate as a single unified gang. Instead, each group, typically made up of seven to eight family members, functions independently. A single village can have as many as 10 to 15 such gangs.
“They arrive in the city on a bus driven by a member of their community. He, too, would get a share from their heist,” the police officer said.
Once in the city, police said, the gang members carry out reconnaissance of their targets. Then, they choose a half moon or a new moon night to execute the robbery. “They believe they are men of the dark, and that darkness is an ally,” said another policeman.
When they steal gold jewellery, police said they don’t divide it ornament by ornament. “They take it to their villages, rub titon stones to extract the gold, and then divide the gold dust by weight,” the police officer said.
They have little interest in diamonds, referring to them dismissively as “glass,” another police officer said. If they come across gold or silver jewellery studded with diamonds, they typically discard the stones after extracting the precious metal.
The Kachha Baniyan gang never really stopped their heists in Delhi. What has changed, though, as per the police, is their murderous spree.
“They are still likely to kill if someone sees their face or interrupts their robbery. But the fear of being shot by the police, and the presence of high-tech surveillance systems, has made them avoid murders as much as possible,” said a police officer.
Even so, once they leave the city, tracking them down remains a daunting task. Police officers said that during raids, the Pardhis display solidarity in their villages, with residents acting as their eyes and ears.
“There are rivalries among different gangs, and occasionally a tip-off may come from them — but it’s rare. If a gang discovers who informed the police, they will go after the person and even target their family,” another police officer said.
