A 27-year-old man, who has been identified as Wakil, was arrested by a team of Special Cell, Southern Range from Lado Sarai in south Delhi on Friday.

He is believed to be a part of the Mewat-based gang that is headed by Jamshed, and is wanted in more than 15 cases of uprooting ATMs in as many as seven states.

Wakil, a resident of Palwal district in Haryana, had been absconding for the past 18 months, and was carrying a reward of Rs 50,000 on his arrest.

On Friday, the Special Cell received a specific information that an active member of the Mewatbased gang would arrive at a bus stop in Lado Sarai to meet one of his aides with the plan of committing an ATM robbery, an officer said.

A team was constituted and a trap laid at the Lado Sarai bus stop, where Wakil was nabbed.

A single shot pistol along with four live cartridges was recovered from him, and a case under the Arms Act has been registered at PS Special Cell, Delhi.

During the interrogation, Wakil revealed that the gang would target ATMs located at isolated spots where guards were not posted.

They would recee a day before and identify such ATMs, and would uproot it with the help of gas cutters and take away the machine with them.

Prior to that they would also spray ink or colour at the lens of cameras installed at ATM to make it ineffective.

Members of this gang are believed to be involved in such activities in over seven states, including Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Maharastra and Gujarat over the last five years.

Wakil also told the police that he is involved in over 15 such cases, and the gang had uprooted and looted six ATMs in Pune in the month of October and November this year. Prior to that they had uprooted an ATM in Morena, Madhya Pradesh in September.

He also disclosed that he has earned over Rs 1 crore by looting ATMs and has invested a part of this wealth in purchasing moveable and immoveable assets in Delhi-NCR. Probe to identify these properties is in progress.