400 nabbed in Bengaluru police crackdown on notorious rowdies

Bengaluru: In a surprise raid and search operation, Bengaluru city police crackdown on notorious rowdies across the city during the intervening night of Friday and Saturday.

"Rowdies are being questioned and they would be booked under the stringent Goonda Act or Karnataka Control of Organised Crime Act (KCOCA) if required," a senior official who is part of the raid in the central division, told IANS.

The police teams from all eight divisions headed by respective division heads conducting raids and operations have so far have raided as many as 800 houses and around 400 rowdies have been picked up for questioning.

The raid and search operations began at 11 p.m. on Friday and it is continuing. As part of the operations, the rowdies were taken to respective police stations where senior officers gave them a stern warning.

The raids and questioning will be continued till afternoon, the police said.

"Most of the rowdies lend money to the public at exorbitant interest rates and get their property documents as security. All those documents are being verified and property owners will be summoned for enquiry if required," a senior police officer from another division told IANS.

"We are also verifying the seized documents, and cases pertaining to some of them will be referred to the Income Tax department or the Directorate of Enforcement," he added.

During these raids, several lethal weapons - Daggers, knives, swords and machetes were seized besides recovering a huge cache of documents about their illegal activities.