A telephone call to plan a meeting with his wife turned out to be a wrong move for Nawab Qureshi, a 30-year-old notorious criminal, as he was caught by the police in Bulandshahr.

At the time of his arrest, a country-made pistol along with two live cartridges used during the carjacking in Okhla Mandi and firing upon police teams of Delhi and UP in Amroha were recovered, police said on Tuesday.

Nawab, who is wanted in cases of murder, robbery and theft, and was on the run, was arrested on February 12 after a team received an information that he would be coming to his village to meet his wife.

During sustained interrogation, he disclosed that after his elder brother Rahees, who was also a notorious criminal, was convicted for a murder for which he is serving life imprisonment at present in a UP jail, he took charge of the formers crime network in 2009-10. He was previously arrested by UP Police in cases of robbery, theft and firing upon police teams.

A few months ago Nawab met one Abdul Saddam in Khurja who was taken in by Nawabs notoriety and joined his gang to earn money by illegal means and became an active member of Nawabs gang, Chinmoy Biswal, DCP (southeast) said.

Abdul Saddams cousin, Arman, works as a delivery van driver in Okhla sabzi mandi and he used to come to meet him there. Both Nawab and Abdul planned to establish their supremacy in Okhla mandi area and they robbed a car on January 29 from Okhla mandi area.

They wanted to sell the looted car to someone in Bulandshahr. When the police received a PCR call and the probe was initiated, it was learnt that the robbed vehicle had a GPS device installed in it. Through technical surveillance, it was found that the car was moving towards Amroha, UP. The police team immediately left for Amroha and continued tracking the car through GPS. But on the way, the GPS stopped working. However, he was traced. The robbers fired upon the police party and in the retaliatory firing, Abdul received gunshot injury in his leg. Nawab managed to escape. Since then a man-hunt was on to nab him, said a senior police official of Delhi Police.

Nawab was born in Khurja, UP in 1988. He is a school dropout and has studied up to class 8. He joined the company of bad elements to earn money by illegal means to meet his needs. At the beginning of his crime career, he committed petty offences which gradually led him to become a serial offender in the realm of crime.