Patna, April 12: What the Bihar police failed to do, their Delhi counterparts have done.

Gangster Santosh Paswan, alias Chotka Santosh, wanted in numerous cases of kidnappings and contract murders, was killed along with his associate Ajay Singh in Delhi’s Badarpur area in an encounter on Saturday night.

Confirming this, Patna’s senior police superintendent N.H. Khan said the two were wanted in about two dozen cases of abductions, murder, loot and extortion in Bihar and Jharkhand.

Santosh was said to be actively involved in the murder of businessmen Manoj Kamalia and the owner of Shyam Steel of Pataliputra Industrial Estate in 2003.

Recently he came into the limelight with the abduction of Begusarai college teacher Paramanad, Dhanbad’s ACC deputy manager Sumanto Chatterjee, businessman Vanshidhar Aggrawal, Vikas Jindal, Manish Aggrawal, Ashok Jain and Patna’s prominent industrialist Surendra Mohan Sahay.

The sensational killing of Patna petrol pump-owner Pramod Mishra in January this year is also being attributed to the slain criminal duo.

“Ajay, a resident of Naubatpur in Patna district, had joined Santosh recently and both were jointly operating around the capital Patna with ease,” a source revealed.

Santosh, who hailed from Bihar Sharief in Nalanda district and was a petty criminal in the area until three years ago, became a hardcore criminal after he came in contact with notorious gangs of Sultan Mia and Shiv Gope. After Mian was nabbed a year ago by a special task force, Santosh became the undisputed gang lord of Bihar.

Recently, the STF had intensified the search for Santosh by constituting a special intelligence team. Hardly a week ago, the team tried to nab him when industrialist Sahay was abducted in Patna but failed. The state police received a jolt when without their knowledge Sahay returned safe on the fourth day after allegedly paying a huge ransom.

But, going by police sources, Bihar police apparently had some success in identifying the operations of the duo and thus helped Delhi police trace them. “After we failed to nab Chotak Santosh from the house of an RJD leader and mukhia of Kothwan in outer Patna, a police team was dispatched to Delhi from where ransom calls had come for Sahay’s family,” a senior officer said.

Apparently this team sought the help of a central intelligence agency in Delhi, and returned after giving vital information to the Delhi police, the source added. The police are now looking for some other hardcore criminals of the Santosh gang. Former leader Sultan Mian is behind bars for a year.

“We are sure that the elimination of the gangsters will bring down the crime graph in Bihar to some extent. More so in face of allegations that some gangsters operate under certain political patronage, which makes our position rather vulnerable,” an officer said on condition of anonymity.