Lawrence Bishnoi's aide killed in attack inside Delhi's Tihar Jail

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, the 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, the 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, the police said.