From AK-47s to Glocks, how Ansari brothers are feeding Delhi gangsters’ arsenal

It was not a country-made pistol. Instead, it was a CZ Shadow handgun, a competition-grade Czech firearm used by sport shooters and tactical units.

In Old Delhi’s chaos, the weapon looked out of place. “It’s the kind of semi-automatic weapon used by specialised commandos, not local criminals on a scooter,” the senior officer recalled.

The man at the handlebars was Rahil Ansari, the officer added. Along with him were his elder brother, Hasim, and a cousin, Saim.

In the weeks that followed, police would describe Rahil as a key figure in an emerging arms pipeline that has been supplying foreign-made weapons to criminal net-works across the national capital.

According to investigators, he had spent months building an operation out of the densely packed Turkman Gate area, coordinating deliveries and arranging safe houses for Shahbaz Ansari, a Uttar Pradesh native believed to be operating from Bangladesh.

What initially appeared to be a local enforcement operation has since expanded into a broader investigation into what officers describe as a rapidly evolving illegal foreign made arms trade in Delhi.

Over the past seven to eight months, investigators say, the network linked to Shahbaz and Rahil supplied between 300 and 400 high-end weapons to gangsters across the city.

In the past month alone, at least six firing incidents have been traced by police to groups connected with the supply chain, according to a senior officer.

Since Rahil’s arrest, Delhi Police has detained more than 15 suspects allegedly linked to the network. Some were found in possession of parts of the stockpile; others, officers said, were preparing consignments for delivery to criminal groups.

“This is one of the most significant crackdowns on an arms supply chain in recent years,” the senior officer said.

The Ansari network

Almost six months after singer Sidhu Moosewala was assassinated in Punjab’s Mansa district, investigators were still tracing the weapons used in the ambush.

At the crime scene, the senior police officer recalled the investigating team recovering roughly two dozen bullet shells.

Forensic analysis later linked them, the officer said, to an arsenal that included AK-47s, Austrian Glock pistols, Turkish Zigana semi-automatics, and even a Russian assault rifle — weapons rarely associated with gangsters in Delhi and Haryana. “Even AK-47s used to be considered extravagant,” the officer added.

For investigators, the cache pointed to something larger: the emergence of a new arms pipeline feeding North India’s criminal networks.

At the center of it, police alleged, was Shahbaz.

Shahbaz Ansari

By the time Shahbaz surfaced on the radar of Indian investigative agencies, officers said, he had already inherited and expanded an arms-trafficking operation built years earlier by his father, Qurban, who allegedly stored weapons inside an electrical shop in Khurja that operated as a front.

“When Qurban died in 2019, Shahbaz and his brother Nadeem took over the business and transformed it,” a senior officer said.

Before this expansion, investigators said, most NCR gangs relied on a domestic ecosystem of gun suppliers. Revolvers moved in from Munger in Bihar and Khargone in Madhya Pradesh, while cruder weapons were assembled in western Uttar Pradesh.

Shahbaz’s network, police said, marked a sharp break from that system.

Officers who investigated Sidhu Moosewala’s murder later began tracing this shift and zeroed in on Shahbaz’s supply chain.

According to a senior Delhi Police officer, the trail pointed to an international channel.

Shahbaz allegedly maintained a contact in Pakistan who would send weaponry, often used by elite forces, to West Asia, where the consignments were dismantled and then routed onward to Nepal.

From Nepal, the officer said, Shahbaz’s brother-in-law Imran would ensure the weapons were reassembled before being moved across the Nepal-India border.

From there, the consignments would reach Khurja, where Shahbaz’s local associates, including a man named Md Ahmad, would distribute them across Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

“Though he had people in Delhi who could store his weapons in the Capital, till his arrest he didn’t have a direct line of supply inside Delhi, and his arrest had hampered that,” a police officer said.

Shahbaz’s answer to that gap, investigators said, was his cousin Rahil.

The escape, the new recruit

By the time the police realised Shahbaz had vanished, his phone had already gone dark.

Two days earlier, on a sweltering June afternoon in Delhi, a vacation court judge had granted Shahbaz interim bail for a month. Shahbaz, who had been arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA), told the court he needed time to care for his wife, Gulfisha, who was scheduled to undergo a spinal decompression surgery. The court ordered him to keep his phone switched on at all times, share his live location with investigators, and report back every week until his surrender on July 18.

Within 48 hours, police said, he had disappeared.

“He switched off the phone almost immediately,” a senior officer said. “After that, we began noticing inconsistencies in the medical documents.”

According to investigators, some of the hospital papers he submitted were allegedly forged. By then, they believed, Shahbaz had already crossed the porous India-Nepal border. From there, officers said, he made his way to Bangladesh.

“Since then, Shahbaz has been shuttling between Bangladesh and Dubai, getting in touch with ISI operatives.
About eight months ago, he contacted his cousin, Rahil, and revived his network,” the officer said.

But in Old Delhi, inside the congested lanes of Daryaganj, the story sounded almost unthinkable.

Mohallah Ansariyan begins where wider roads break into alleys barely four feet across. Scooter mechanics hammer dented metal frames. SIM card vendors line one side of the street, while tea stalls occupy the other.

Just around the corner from a police post sits a narrow mobile phone shop run by 54-year-old Asif Ansari, Rahil’s elder brother.

“The last time I saw Shahbaz was maybe ten years ago,” Asif said, lowering his voice, as shopkeepers around him lingered, pretending not to listen.

“We had gone to Khurja for his sister’s wedding. That was when people there started telling me things about him.”
He paused.

“Before that, I didn’t know anything.”

For years afterward, Asif insisted, Shahbaz was little more than a name occasionally mentioned within the family. Rahil, he believed, earned a modest living supplying second-hand clothes to dealers across Delhi.

However, investigators present a very different picture. They said that Rahil had been pulled into a criminal training network run by a man with a history of violent crime – Waseem Malik, accused in cases of murder and robbery.

“Rahil moved from Bulandshahr to Delhi two years ago. Waseem, who used to procure weapons from Shabaz’s network, was tasked with training Rahil,” an officer said. “One of Rahil’s first assignments was to wrap a firearm in black polythene and conceal it.”

Despite training that began two years earlier, police said Shahbaz only re-established contact with Rahil seven months ago. That, officers believed, was when instructions began to flow again.

Guns and details

Skorpion Submachine gun

Place of Origin: Erstwhile Czechoslovakia/ Magazine: 20 to 40 bullets/ Effective range:
50 to 150 metres

Zigana Sport (Photo by Special Arrangement)

Tauras PT 917C
Place of Origin: Brazil/ Magazine:15-17 bullets/ Effective range: 25 to 50 metres

Walther PP

Place of Origin: Post- World War I Germany/ Magazine: 15 bullets/ Effective Range: 23 to 45 metres

Zigana Sport

Place of Origin:Turkey/ Magazine: 15 bullets/ Effective range: 23 to 50 metres

Beretta M9
Place of Origin: Italy/ Magazine: 15 bullets/ Effective Range: 50 metres

Photo by special arrangement

Cracks in the network

After Shahbaz fled, investigators said, the market for foreign-made pistols across the NCR entered a new phase.
“Gangs started using access to these weapons as an incentive when recruiting new members — ‘Join us, and you’ll get access to better, foreign-made firearms’,” a senior officer said.

Police also said the trend further strengthened the region’s extortion economy. “All of this gun trafficking ultimately supports gangs that make money through extortion, demanding money through threats and violence,” the officer said.

Investigators emphasise the killing of Moosewala changed procurement patterns among the Capital’s powerful gangs, including networks associated with Bishnoi, Gogi, and Himanshu Bhau.

“These arms have the fire power. Zigana pistols can discharge up to 15 rounds in a single burst,” the officer said. “Some CZ variants, particularly from the CZ7 series, are far more precise.”

What made the shift more consequential, officers said, was that it required little sophistication to operate.
“Most of these were 9-mm foreign-made pistols,” another officer explained. “Once loaded, an entire magazine could be emptied in seconds. They became tools of intimidation — used in extortion, and also in violent encounters between rival groups.”

As demand for foreign-made weapons rose across the NCR, police said, the trafficking network grew increasingly organized. An internal document from the Special Cell described a structured network led by Shahbaz. At its apex were Shahbaz and his brother Rehan. Beneath them operated a second tier — Rahil and Imran — who handled movement across the Indo-Nepal border into Khurja.

From there, the network becomes more granular. Weapons were reportedly stored at a residence in Mohallah Nihariyan before being redistributed to zonal handlers: Waseem overseeing Delhi, and Ahmad managing Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.

Officers described a fourth layer responsible for concealment and final distribution — men who stored weapons and released them only upon demand from gangs.

In Delhi, this role was allegedly handled by Fardeen and Waseek; in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, by Aman and Adil. Others — Ghanshyam, Sonu, Nauman, and Naushad — were later absorbed into the network as demand expanded.
However, Rahil’s arrest on March 13, investigators said, resulted in cracks in the syndicate.

Within a week, police detained Waseem Malik. Soon after, Ghanshyam was apprehended with two semi-automatic pistols, including models such as the PX-5 and Stoeger, both manufactured in Türkiye.

“In subsequent raids, we recovered a range of foreign-made weapons — including Beretta pistols and a PX-5.7 model typically associated with specialised forces,” said DCP Sanjeev Yadav.

The trail eventually led investigators to Naushad in Bulandshahr, where a Czech-made Skorpion submachine gun was recovered. The weapon, they said, was part of a larger consignment that had entered India through Nepal.

Rahil’s arrest, officers said, created a rupture — but not an ending. The arrests, seizures, and intercepted consignments have offered only a partial map of the network. “As long as Shahbaz remains out there, the network can rebuild itself — new recruiters, new routes, new faces,” a senior officer said. This is why investigators insisted that the next phase of the crackdown is even more crucial.

Shahbaz Ansari (Image enhanced using AI)

Use of foreign-made weapons

* Singer Sidhu Moosewala’s murder in Punjab in 2022