Lawrence Bishnoi's aide killed inside Delhi's Tihar Jail
New Delhi (PTI): An associate of gangster Lawrence Bishnoi was killed in an attack by rival gang members inside Tihar Jail on Friday evening, according to officials.
Prince Tewatia (33) was an undertrial prisoner lodged in ward 6 of central jail number 3 which has around 380 inmates, they said.
"At around 5.30 pm today, Tewatia had an altercation with another inmate, Attatur Rehman, who is from a rival gang. Tewatia attacked him with an improvised weapon and members of both the gangs joined the fight that left four people, including Tewatia and Rehman, injured," a jail official said.
"The injured were taken to Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital. While three of them are stated to be stable, Tewatia was declared dead by the doctors," the official said.
Apart from Rehman, Bobby and Vinay sustained injuries in the fight.
A case was registered and an inquiry by the chief judicial magistrate has been initiated, the official said.
He belonged to a middle-class family from Gaziabad and studied till class 12 at a private school in Delhi's Chirag Enclave. He had two siblings -- a younger brother and a sister. Tewatia's father retired from the DDA while his mother is a homemaker.
Tewatia was previously involved in 16 criminal cases, including murder and attempt to murder, police said.
He was arrested for the first time in 2010 in a murder case. He produced a fake birth certificate in court so that he could be treated as a juvenile but was caught and charged with forgery.
While inside a jail, he came in contact with gangster Rohit Chaudhary in 2013 and joined his gang. The following year, he came out on bail and started extorting money from cable operators, satta operators, and builders in south Delhi on the instructions of Chaudhary, police said.
Tewatia was a trigger-happy individual who would not hesitate to open fire at people, including his neighbours and even a live-in partner.
In January 2015, he shot and injured his three neighbours and in February, he shot an advocate in the leg as he had a feud with him.
In April 2015, he met a woman and entered into a live-in relationship with her. After a while, Tewatia wanted to move out but the woman refused so he shot her in the abdomen, police said.
In a road rage incident in January 2016, Tewatia shot a person in the leg. When another motorist intervened, Tewatia, along with his associates Monu and Sunny, robbed his car and shot him in the leg.
Tewatia was arrested and sent to jail in 2018. The following year, he had a fallout with Chaudhary over the sharing of crime proceeds and quit his gang. Sometime later, he joined Bishnoi's gang, police said.
In 2019, Tewatia was released on parole for his marriage but escaped. Later that year, in a raid conducted by the Special Cell of Delhi Police, he was arrested and sent to judicial custody, police said.
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HC questions Delhi govt over failure to regulate sale of old vehicles, refers to Red Fort blast
New Delhi (PTI): The Delhi High Court questioned the city government on Wednesday over its failure to regulate the sale and transfer of used vehicles, while pointing out that in a recent bomb blast near the Red Fort, a second-hand car was used, making the issue more significant.
A bench of Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Tushar Rao Gedela asked the Delhi government to file a detailed response on the issue of regulating authorised dealers of registered vehicles.
"A car changes four hands but the original owner has not changed. Therefore, what happens? That man (the original owner) goes to the slaughterhouse? What is this? How are you permitting this? You will take a call when two-three more bomb blasts take place?" the bench asked the Delhi government's counsel.
The bomb blast near the iconic Mughal-era monument was carried out using a second-hand car, making the issue even more significant, it said.
The court listed the matter for further hearing in January 2026.
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The court was hearing a public interest litigation (PIL) plea filed by an organisation, Towards Happy Earth Foundation, highlighting the challenges in the implementation of rules 55A to 55H of the Central Motor Vehicles Rules, introduced in December 2022 to regulate authorised dealers of registered vehicles.
While the rules were intended to bring accountability to the second-hand vehicle market, the petitioner's counsel argued that they have failed in practice due to regulatory gaps and procedural hurdles.
The plea said there is a major gap in the amended framework, that is, the absence of any statutory mechanism for reporting dealer-to-dealer transfers.
"In reality, most used vehicles pass through multiple dealers before reaching the final buyer, but the rules recognise only the first transfer to the initial authorised dealer.
"As a result, the chain of custody breaks after the first step, defeating the very purpose of accountability," the petition said.
It added that because of these gaps, only a very small percentage of dealers across India have been able to obtain authorised dealer registration and in Delhi, not a single dealer has got it.
Consequently, lakhs of vehicles continue to circulate without any record of who is actually in possession of those, it said.
The plea said only a small fraction of India's estimated 30,000 to 40,000 used-vehicle dealers are registered under the authorised-dealer framework.
The petition also pointed out that the 11-year-old vehicle used in the November 10 bomb blast near the Red Fort was sold several times but was still registered in its original owner's name.
The blast near the Red Fort had claimed 15 lives.
