NEW DELHI: In the villages of Najafgarh , southeast Delhi, the price of land is often a life. More than 100 people have been killed in a decades-old fight for land and supremacy here between two groups centred in the villages of Mitraon and Dichaon Kalan, about 7km apart.Dichaon Kalan, a much bigger village, is the stronghold of Kishan Pehelwan, whose younger brother and former Najafgarh MLA Bharat Singh was shot dead on Sunday evening. Mitraon is home to Pehelwan’s rivals, the Anoop-Balraj gang. The writ of law does not work in these villages an hour’s drive away from Parliament House. Feuds are settled with an eye for an eye, which explains the mounting toll in a dispute that started over a 12-acre plot between the forefathers of Pehelwan and Balraj.But the bloody gang war that made Najafgarh infamous broke out only in the 1990s when Pehelwan’s men allegedly gunned down the brothers Anoop and Balraj besides several on their side. The Balraj gang allegedly retaliated by murdering Pehelwan’s uncle, Rami, and some others.Through the 1990s and the early 2000s, about 50 people were killed. Pehelwan emerged stronger by striking first, but the Mitraon gang swore revenge and the village boundaries have remained impassable for both sides ever since."In 2007, Pehelwan became even more powerful as his brother Bharat Singh was elected municipal councillor. A year later, he won the assembly election from Najafgarh on an INLD ticket," a senior police officer said. Pehelwan, who was arrested in Rajasthan for the petty crime of possessing 10 liquor bottles, soon filled the seat vacated by Bharat. His wife, Neelam, was also elected councillor.In 2012, the Balraj gang that was being led by Udaiveer alias Kala orchestrated an attack on Bharat, but the MLA survived his bullet wounds. However, the tide turned in 2013 when Bharat lost the Delhi assembly elections. Several new gangs emerged in Najafgarh to feed off the property boom. As unauthorized colonies, land disputes and cases of land-grab multiplied, so did the demand for toughs.Gang lords provided protection to the landowners for a fee and a share in the development pie, but they also pushed up the death toll in the area. Some of the new gangsters who earned notoriety are Naveen Khati, Ravinder Bholu, Manjeet Mahal, Sandeep Mental and Vikas Langarpuria. The villages descended into an all-out war to control land rights.Be it the killing of four people on New Year’s Eve or half a dozen murders before that, blood hasn’t stopped flowing in the area ever since. Police have linked all the murders to gang rivalry. The New Year murders resulted from a fight between the gangs of Naveen Khati and Ravinder Bholu.The villagers live from day to day, yet nobody had anticipated that Bharat Singh, a popular figure despite his electoral loss, would be gunned down. A bloody backlash is certain. Mitraon is bracing for it.