Cuttack, June 6: Three months since police formed a special squad to track down notorious gangster Md Sakil for allegedly trying to revive extortion and organised crime, they have not managed to make any tangible headway.

The city police squad has been trying to track him for months now after receiving inputs that indicated signs of a return of extortion rackets following his emergence.

A police official said: "We have been receiving complaints and information about extortion calls and criminal movement. Based on these inputs, we have expedited efforts to nab Sakil who, along with his associates, has been creating problems in different parts of the city."

The cops came close to him twice and both times he managed to escape. Police sources said on the night of March 3, Sakil and his associates assembled near Odisha Maritime Museum with arms and ammunitions. Acting on a tip-off, the special squad raided the area. But Sakil and his gang managed to escape.

Another tip-off on the night of April 17 had helped the special squad track him to Hadiapatha within the Mahanadi embankments. He was allegedly on extortion calls with some businessmen.

Though the special squad managed to capture one of his main associates, Sk Babu, after firing at his leg, Shakil managed to escape.

He has since eluded the special squad. A police official, however, claimed that Sakil would be nabbed shortly as the squad had got clues about his operation following the arrest of Wasim Khan, one of his associates, on Friday.

"Wasim is a veteran criminal accused in cases of attempt to murder and bombing within Manglabag police limits and is a close associate of Sakil," Cuttack deputy commissioner of police Sanjeev Arora said. However, he did not divulge details of leads the cops had on Sakil.

On April 26, the cops nabbed one Gyana Ranjan Bastia, another associate of Sakil, but had failed to make any headway in tracking the gangster. Police sources said Sakil, a former member of Kendrapara's Tito gang, had teamed up with Sk Babu of Cuttack after his release from jail in January and started operating his own gang.

The duo had started executing daylight bombings and firings while allegedly starting an extortion racket.

The cops had initially thought that the arrest of the Dhal Samant brothers in January 2016 would bring a lull in organised crime in the city.

The siblings had reigned over the city's extortion and crime syndicate for years. After their arrest, the police had systematically gone about nabbing most of their associates.