Nagpur: In a 45-day span, another gang war rocked the city over a scramble for spoils of the gambling circuit with a hardened goon, Dilip Sahu, stabbed, stoned and then hammered to death in Kaikade Nagar, minutes before Sunday midnight. Sahu’s aide Piyush Sontakke was critically injured in the street fight. The clash escalated with Sontakke aides rushing to the site and pinning down the assailants.The midnight gang war was a rerun of the Hawrapeth incident in April, when a goon was killed and at least four others injured in Ajni police limits.
City police commissioner Ravinder Singal, joint CP Aswati Dorje and others visited Beltarodi police station later in the day to review the situation in which women were used as shields by the mobsters. Though police tried to project the murder as a fallout of a road rage between Dilip Sahu and his brother-in-law, Ganeshu Sahu, a reality check threw up murky details, pointing to rivalry over gambling profits and souring family ties.

The murdered goon, Dilip, was earlier booked for several offences, including murder. He married Ganeshu’s sister in 2015, but they began staying separately. Sources stated she too was present at the spot, when her estranged husband was being bludgeoned to death.
Sources stated Dilip was returning home on Sontakke’s bike and while passing by Shitala Mata temple of Kaikade Nagar, his brother-in-law Ganeshu was waiting in ambush with his gang members, Piyush Lilhare and his cousin Akash. They intercepted Dilip and his friend and abused them for rash driving, triggering a fight.
Sources stated the sparks had been flying between the rival gangs for quite sometime over gambling profits and a section of Beltarodi police was aware of the flare-up, but did not act.
While Sontakke alerted his friends from his Ramteke Nagar turf, Ganeshu and Lilhare also summoned their supporters, which soon turned into a battlefield as the two groups clashed with knives, sticks, rods, glass bottles and bricks.
An eyewitness said, some women too were present in the crowd. Sources stated some family members of Lilhares too joined the fight to counter Sontakke’s men.
The mobs dispersed after Dilip and Sontakke collapsed to the ground bleeding. Some residents rushed Dilip and Sontakke to the govt medical college and hospital, where Dilip was declared dead while Sontakke was shifted to the ICU.
Beltarodi police arrested Ganeshu and the Lilhare brothers for murder and also registered a cross complaint of attempt to murder against Dilip, Sontakke, their friend Ashwin Nade, Jay Suryavanshi, Jagdish Sahani, Aman Rangari and others. Nade and Suryavanshi are in police custody. Kaikade Nagar remained tense on Monday and police deployed forces to stop a backlash.