{"id":218066,"date":"2026-05-03T03:33:34","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T03:33:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/218066\/"},"modified":"2026-05-03T03:33:34","modified_gmt":"2026-05-03T03:33:34","slug":"gangster-queens-inside-the-rise-of-women-in-organised-crime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/218066\/","title":{"rendered":"Gangster Queens: Inside the rise of women in organised crime"},"content":{"rendered":"

A young woman from Jhunjhunu in Rajasthan has a tattoo of an AK-47 on her hand, like a declaration of intent. Another woman was running an innocuous beauty salon in Delhi, but her nickname is a dead giveaway: Madam Zeher<\/a> (Madam Poison). A third woman is armed not just with a bachelor\u2019s degree in computer applications but also weapons: she is hailed as Revolver Rani<\/a>.<\/p>\n

These are not characters from the pages of a thriller, but real women who have come to occupy central roles in criminal networks across the National Capital Region (NCR) and beyond.
The woman with the Kalashnikov tattoo has an everyday name\u2014 Pooja Sharma, alias Maya. And she had an everyday life as a wife until she left her family, reportedly got in touch with a gang leader on Instagram and became a gangster herself. In 2024, the then 28-year-old was allegedly given an assignment. The Lawrence Bishnoi<\/a> gang asked her to disguise herself as a lawyer in a Chandigarh courtroom and shoot dead a rival gangster. But before she could carry out the hit she was arrested; the police reportedly recovered a newly bought lawyer\u2019s gown from her.<\/p>\n

\"POOJA
Before she was labelled Madam Zeher by the police, Khusnuma Ansari was a makeover artist in Mahipalpur, Delhi. Her Instagram account has brides in heavy lehnga and jewellery, but the police who arrested her in February this year claim her beauty parlour was not just about makeup. They allege it was a front for a drugs network. She is also allegedly linked to the Bishnoi syndicate.\"ETLive Events \"KHUSNUMA
WOMEN IN CRIME<\/a> LANDS
In India\u2019s criminal landscape, women were on the margins\u2014except for Phoolan Devi in the ravines of Chambal and Haseena Parkar, the younger sister of underworld don Dawood Ibrahim, who reportedly ran a dreaded extortion network in Mumbai. Today\u2019s gangster women are young, educated and visible on social media. And are key actors in the criminal networks in NCR and beyond.
This change happened alongside a shift in the theatre of action. For a long time, Mumbai was the epicentre of organised crime<\/a> syndicates. Its underworld was glamorised and immortalised in Bollywood films that depicted extortion rackets and gang rivalries set against the city\u2019s seafront and skyline. Over the past decade, the locale has moved northwards\u2014to Delhi and its adjoining belt, stretching across Haryana, Rajasthan and Punjab.
If Dawood was once the face of organised crime, it is now Lawrence Bishnoi. His network\u2014sprawling and decentralised\u2014is run through a web of operatives in India and abroad, even as Bishnoi, who has been linked to multiple criminal activities, remains in jail since 2014.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany women gangsters have grown up in environments steeped in crime, where the possibility of leading a law-abiding life is difficult,\u201d says Vikram Singh, former DGP, Uttar Pradesh. \u201cThey often use fronts such as beauty parlours, imitation jewellery shops and other small businesses to conceal their identities. These establishments can also serve as channels for money laundering. And since they share the proceeds of crime, they are as much a part of the syndicate as anyone else.\u201d<\/p>\n

“Women gang members often use fronts such as beauty parlours, imitation jewellery shops and other small businesses to conceal their real identities. These establishments can also serve as channels for money laundering. And since they share in the proceeds of crime, they are as much a part of the syndicate as anyone else”<\/p>\n

\u2014 Vikram Singh, Former DGP, Uttar Pradesh<\/p>\n

Meeran Chadha Borwankar, who headed the Mumbai Crime Branch and the National Crime Records Bureau, had handled cases involving female underworld figures such as Chhota Rajan\u2019s wife Sujata aka Nani as well as Parkar in the 1990s and 2000s. \u201cBut unlike Nani and Haseena\u2014who were drawn into the underworld largely because of family ties \u2014 today there are women who are pulled in by the allure of glamour and visibility. The fact that some gangsters maintain active social media profiles only reinforces that shift,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

“Unlike Nani (wife of Chhota Rajan) and Haseena (sister of Dawood Ibrahim)\u2014who were drawn into the underworld largely because of family ties\u2014today there are women who are pulled in by the allure of glamour and visibility. The fact that some gangsters maintain active social media profiles only reinforces that shift”<\/p>\n

\u2014 Meeran Chadha Borwankar, Former Head, Crime Branch, Mumbai<\/p>\n

Take Zoya Khan. An operative allegedly linked to the Bishnoi group, her arrest last year exposed an unexpected double life\u2014she was a regular at high-profile social gatherings, dressed in designer threads. She had an Instagram presence with a sizable following but they were not privy to one fact\u2014that she was the wife of a young Delhi-based gangster, Hashim Baba.\"ZOYA
THE NEW RECRUITS
A troubling pattern emerges from these cases: kingpins are scouting for young, socially savvy women\u2014 often digitally connected and less likely to attract suspicion\u2014as recruits in their networks.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith urban society itself in transition, more women are being drawn into gangsterism in pursuit of easy money and a sense of happiness\u2014despite the risk of social stigma,\u201d says Shashi Bhushan Singh, associate professor of sociology, Delhi School of Economics.<\/p>\n

Anu Dhankar was just 19 when she allegedly lured a man to a Burger King outlet in Delhi\u2019s Rajouri Garden in 2024. He was shot dead by her accomplices. Investigators later alleged she had been working for a gangster called Himanshu Bhau, believed to be operating from Portugal. According to reports citing unnamed investigators, Dhankar allegedly confessed that she joined the gang after Bhau promised her a life of luxury in US.<\/p>\n

\"ANU<\/p>\n

Former DGP Singh says that beyond active participation, many female gangsters also provide crucial emotional backing and logistical support. \u201cThey are not just willing accomplices; they often serve as shock absorbers for their male counterparts,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Many women who are drawn into gangster networks have turbulent personal histories\u2014broken marriages or instability at home. \u201cDisorganisation of family or broken homes can, at times, push women towards gangsterism,\u201d says Kamei Aphun, associate professor of sociology at the Delhi School of Economics. But it need not just be that.<\/p>\n

“Disorganisation of family or broken homes can, at times, push women towards gangsterism. While economic motives\u2014the lure of earning more\u2014cannot be ruled out, psychological factors such as a desire for revenge, along with a quest for power in a male-dominated world, are equally significant drivers behind such decisions”<\/p>\n

\u2014 Kamei Aphun, sociologist, Delhi School of Economics<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile economic motives \u2014the lure of earning more\u2014 cannot be ruled out, psychological factors such as a desire for revenge and a quest for power in a male-dominated world are equally significant drivers behind such decisions,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n

Anuradha Chaudhary became Revolver Rani after a share-trading venture that she ran with her then husband, Felix Deepak Minz, failed and she found herself heavily in debt. She began to live with a gangster, Anandpal Singh, who was killed in a police encounter in Churu in 2017. A prominent operative in organised crime circles, she has been allegedly involved in kidnappings and extortions. But it was her wedding to Sandeep alias Kala Jatheri, a member of the Bishnoi syndicate, who came out on parole for the ceremony, that brought her to the limelight in 2024. Her photos, in a pink sari with hennaed hands, went viral.<\/p>\n

\"ANURADHA
LONG WAY FROM CHAMBAL
Revolver Rani and Phoolan Devi are separated by time and circumstances. Referring to Phoolan, who took up arms in response to the violence inflicted on her, Aditi Narayani Paswan, associate professor, Dr Ambedkar International Centre, says, \u201cWomen\u2019s entry into gangs\u2014often against the backdrop of family breakdowns like disputes or divorce\u2014signals normlessness, where rapid social change erodes traditional roles while creating an ecosystem shaped by shared stories of marginalisation and injustice.\u201d The underworld \u2014now featuring younger, more visible women in key roles\u2014has moved on from those days.<\/p>\n

The era of territorial gangsterism\u2014by dacoit gangs in Chambal, for instance\u2014 too is largely over, says Singh. \u201cProfits from today\u2019s cybercrime are a thousand times more than what years of banditry in Chambal could yield,\u201d he says, adding that modern syndicates\u2014 often run from abroad\u2014require little more than a few hundred foot soldiers, including women, and sophisticated weapons.<\/p>\n

For law enforcement agencies, the real challenge is not just identifying gangsters who blend in as ordinary citizens running small businesses, but assembling enough evidence to secure convictions. \u201cIn the mid-2000s, the Mumbai Police knew that Haseena was extorting money from builders. But given Dawood\u2019s notoriety, people were too frightened to file complaints,\u201d recalls Borwankar, who then headed the Mumbai Crime Branch. \u201cWe were relieved when someone finally came forward. But Haseena got wind of it, disappeared \u2014 and then reappeared dramatically in court.\u201d<\/p>\n

That 2007 moment had a cinematic afterlife in the film Haseena Parkar , where Shraddha Kapoor, playing Haseena, arrives at a sessions court in a kaali-peeli taxi with a few other women\u2014all of them in burqas, all of them with their faces covered. Who was the real Parkar? Finally, she lifted her veil and revealed her identity.<\/p>\n

The scene captures the paradox of India\u2019s underworld: anonymity is power, and revelation, when it comes, is nothing short of a spectacle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A young woman from Jhunjhunu in Rajasthan has a tattoo of an AK-47 on her hand, like a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":218067,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[85992,85991,9,24,63,85988,122,124,123,85990,85989],"class_list":["post-218066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-lawrence-bishnoi","tag-madam-zeher","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-organised-crime","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news","tag-revolver-rani","tag-women-in-crime"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218066\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}