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Rise of gang wars in Nagpur

 

Gang wars in Nagpur represented through linked crime scenes, police barricades and recurring violent incidents across the city.
Gang rivalries in Nagpur have increasingly been linked to retaliatory attacks, recurring violence and organised criminal networks

Gang wars in Nagpur are no longer confined to old police files or the memory of one notorious rivalry. They are breaking out on market roads, outside cafés, near homes and in densely packed neighbourhoods where daily life is supposed to move without armed men settling scores in public.


In Vidarbha’s biggest city, the pattern now looks less like isolated revenge and more like recurring bursts of organised violence.


The broader crime picture makes it harder to dismiss this as a string of unrelated incidents. Nagpur ranked second among India’s 19 metropolitan cities for murder rate in 2024, with 88 murder cases and a rate of 3.5 per lakh, and it also ranked second for attempted murder rate with 192 cases.


Yet police motive data for 2025 showed that only part of the city’s violence came from old criminal enmities, while many killings still grew from petty quarrels, domestic disputes and money fights. 


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Nagpur Gang War Data 2025–2026: Hotspot Areas and Recent Incidents


The rise of gang wars in Nagpur is easiest to see when older crackdowns are placed next to current street violence.


In 2016, Nagpur police called one MCOCA drive the biggest such crackdown in Maharashtra, booking 28 people from four gangs. In 2022, city police booked 22 members of three gangs under MCOCA in a single day.

Those actions showed that organised groups were not marginal players. They were established enough to require repeated use of the state’s toughest anti-organised crime law. By 2024 and 2025, the city was no longer dealing only with hidden rackets or one-off extortion complaints.


Rival factions were fighting in Hawrapeth, Khaparkheda, Gokulpeth and other pockets in a way that made gang rivalry visible again on the street. 


The city’s own anti-gang mapping gives that picture a harder edge. During a crackdown launched after the murder of café owner Avinash Bhusari in April 2025, police said 28 criminal gangs were operating in Nagpur’s sensitive pockets.


Zone II in west Nagpur was identified as the epicentre with eight active syndicates, while Zone IV in east Nagpur had seven. Intelligence teams were running evening operations, checking homes, tracking recently released inmates and monitoring rivalries to stop retaliatory attacks before they happened.


That kind of mapping does not happen in a city dealing only with random violence. It happens when police believe gang structures are stable, territorial and active enough to produce repeat clashes. 


There is also a sharp difference between citywide murder numbers and gang war impact. In 2025, Nagpur recorded 91 murders, close to its long-term annual average of 90. Police data broke those killings down into trivial disputes, issues involving women, financial quarrels, property disputes and 13 murders linked to old criminal enmities.


On paper, that means gang rivalry was not the single biggest driver of murder. On the ground, it meant something else as well. Organised feuds were more likely to involve multiple accused, repeated targeting, illegal weapons, surveillance of rivals and revenge plans stretching across months.


In Vidarbha’s main urban centre, that made gang wars look louder, faster and more contagious than many other forms of violence, even when they did not dominate the murder chart numerically. 

The most recent example came on 17 July 2026 in Pachpaoli, where bullets were fired at Ajay Chinchkhede, who is out on bail in an MCOCA case. Police sources described an intense tussle between two gangs for supremacy in the area. The immediate trigger was money and a previous tip-off that allegedly led to Jagdish Gokhale’s arrest in an MD drug case.


Two masked scouts first confirmed Chinchkhede’s presence, then Jagdish allegedly arrived with bike-borne gang members and opened fire in the Shaniwar Bazaar area near Kamal Chowk. Chinchkhede escaped. The market did not. Gunfire in a busy bazaar is the clearest sign of how far these conflicts now travel from the old image of a back-lane gang settlement. 



What's Fueling Nagpur Gang Wars: Drugs, Revenge Killings and Land Disputes


The story that has most defined Nagpur’s present phase of gang rivalry is the Hiranwar-Sheikhu feud. It moved from personal vendetta into an extended cycle of murder and retaliation.


Police linked the January 2025 killing of Pawan Hiranwar in Nagpur Rural to a revenge sequence that began after Sheikhu’s brother Saroj was murdered near the Shankar Nagar petrol pump in July 2022.

Reports from the investigation described vows of retaliation, appeals to prove “mettle”, and a carefully planned rural ambush by armed assailants on two-wheelers. What matters here is not the drama of one feud. It is the mechanism. One killing generated a promise of revenge, the revenge generated another hit, and the conflict kept pulling fresh recruits and relatives into its orbit. 


That feud crossed into one of the city’s most public killings in April 2025. Bhusari, the owner of Sosha Café in Gokulpeth, was shot dead outside his premises while eating ice cream with his manager. Police later said the Hiranwar gang had planned to kill a member of the rival camp during an Ambedkar Jayanti procession, but their intended target did not show up.


Bhusari was then attacked the next night, allegedly after being mistaken for someone from the rival side. The attackers fired six rounds. Five gang members were later arrested after a hunt that stretched across Bhopal, Kolkata, Visakhapatnam, Tirupati and Gondia, with investigators saying the accused kept changing mobile phones and SIM cards.


Police also traced a two-storey “safe house” in Kachipura where gang members were hiding and planning operations. That single case shows how Nagpur’s gang wars now combine mistaken identity, mobile networks, interstate movement and purpose-built hideouts. 


Drugs have become another clear engine of gang conflict. In Mahal in May 2026, police described an open gang war growing out of a split inside a narcotics syndicate. The Kothi Road firing was tied to a feud between the Ghate side and the Ganga faction over the illegal MD trade, money and control. Seven to eight rounds were allegedly fired near Navyug School after six men arrived on motorcycles.


Investigators said the attack followed an earlier stabbing and a breakdown in relations between former associates. Another report on the same clash described a “sophisticated supply chain” distributing high-value drugs across Nagpur and beyond. This was not a street quarrel that suddenly turned violent. It was a turf fight inside a functioning drug network. 


The drug economy is also reaching into prisons and social media. In October 2025, Nagpur police said a mephedrone syndicate was being run from inside Nagpur Central Jail by a Mumbai-based kingpin who used Facebook and Instagram to build a network, recruit an inmate and push MD into the city.


Police seized 106 grams of MD powder and said the operation exposed how jailed criminals were sustaining and expanding organised crime from custody. Once prison, street drug markets, and online messaging start working together, the risk of gang war rises for a simple reason. The network becomes harder to isolate. A clash on a road in Mahal or Pachpaoli is then only the visible end of a chain that may begin in jail, on a phone or through a courier linked to the narcotics trade. 


Money from outside the drug trade also feeds Nagpur’s gang structures. As far back as 2012, local crime intelligence was linking some Nagpur gang rivalries to extortion and the city’s booming real estate business.


By August 2025, police were planning a task force against “D-gangs” accused of usurping prime land with forged documents, duplicate records, coercion and violence. Police records cited in that coverage mentioned more than 150 land-grabbing complaints in a year.


In June 2025, another report warned of a brewing confrontation between two betting-linked factions, with police and residents fearing a repeat of the Hiranwar-Sheikhu cycle. The names change, but the pattern stays familiar.


Gang wars in Nagpur are being financed by more than one market, with drugs, land, extortion and betting all feeding the same culture of retaliation. 


Why Nagpur Gang Violence Keeps Spreading to Public Spaces


One reason Nagpur’s gang wars feel more present now is that they are no longer locked inside one classic underworld geography. Hawrapeth still appears in the story. So do Ajni and Imambada.


But newer flashpoints include Gokulpeth, Mahal, Pachpaoli, Pardi and mixed residential-commercial zones where a firing outside a home or a café quickly becomes a neighbourhood event.

In January 2025, a gang attack in Imambada reportedly followed an earlier strike on a rival’s house and involved swords and axes. In April 2024, Hawrapeth residents spoke openly about the fear that a key accused would return on bail and that local “gundagardi” would resume. In May 2025, residents of Uday Nagar described near-daily threats from a local gang and said women, children and older residents were afraid to step out. “We face threats to our lives on an almost daily basis,” one resident said. That is what turns a criminal rivalry into a civic story. Rival gangs do not stay within their own circle once the neighbourhood starts planning around them. 


Another reason is the way old criminals, recruits and released offenders keep crossing paths. In May 2025, police described a 52 per cent rise in murders over two years, from 29 in the first five months of 2023 to 44 in the same period of 2025, and said recently released offenders, externed goons and people involved in arms cases were under active scrutiny.


By February 2026, police said they had mounted more than 14,000 preventive actions during 2025, detained 53 individuals under the MPDA Act and jailed 100 alleged gang members in MCOCA cases focused on shootings and drug trafficking.


Those numbers do not prove every gang is growing. They do show that the churn inside Nagpur’s organised crime scene is heavy enough to require constant preventive monitoring. In Vidarbha, few cities offer that mix of recurring street clashes, mature criminal networks and such a visible need to keep tracking people as soon as they come out of jail. 


The legal response also tells its own story about spread and adaptation. In April 2026, Nagpur Rural police invoked MCOCA against two gangs tied to drugs, illegal arms and violence. In June 2026, Kapil Nagar police used MCOCA against the Titiya gang, then a second time in three months against another five-member group after a witness intervened in the beating of a child. In that case, investigators listed 19 criminal cases against the main accused and multiple prior cases against the others.


These are not all classic “gang wars” in the cinematic sense. Some are violent local groups, some are drug-linked syndicates, and some are extortion or coercion crews.

Together, they explain why police in July 2026 moved to create fresh records for “new” criminals not yet under supervision. The city is not only dealing with known gang names. It is also trying to catch the next set before they graduate into the old pattern. 


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FAQs


Q: What is driving the rise of gang wars in Nagpur?

A: The strongest drivers in the recent record are revenge killings, drug turf battles, land and extortion money, and the constant recycling of known offenders through jail, bail and renewed rivalry. The Hiranwar-Sheikhu feud, the Mahal MD conflict, the Kothi Road firing and the Pachpaoli shooting all show how quickly disputes over money, drugs and prior arrests can become armed retaliation. 


Q: Which areas in Nagpur are most linked to gang violence?

A: Recent reporting and police mapping point repeatedly to west Nagpur and east Nagpur as major gang zones, while specific flashpoints have included Hawrapeth, Ajni, Imambada, Gokulpeth, Mahal, Pachpaoli, Pardi and Hudkeshwar. Police said Zone II had eight active syndicates and Zone IV had seven during the 2025 crackdown, while later reporting showed localised spikes in places such as Pardi and Hudkeshwar. 


Q: Are Nagpur gang wars mostly about drugs or personal rivalry?

A: They are rarely just one thing. Drug turf has become a major factor, especially in Mahal and in prison-linked MD networks, but revenge after earlier murders remains central in major feuds such as Hiranwar-Sheikhu. Land grabbing, betting and extortion also keep surfacing as organised revenue streams behind armed groups. 



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About the Author

Pranay Arya is the founder and editor of The News Dirt, an independent journalism platform focused on ground-level reporting across Vidarbha. He has authored 800+ research-based articles covering public issues, regional history, infrastructure, governance, and socio-economic developments, building one of the region’s most extensive digital knowledge archives.

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