How a Facebook Photo of a Starbucks Cup Led Delhi Police to the City’s Biggest Gangster

If you went to Starbucks, ordered a venti soy latte with your name on it, and didn’t post about it on social media, did you even go to Starbucks? It’s this kind of thinking that landed some gangsters in trouble.

Jitender Maan alias Gogi was one of Delhi’s most wanted gangsters and extortionists. From rich businessmen to politicians, he would demand large sums of money under the guise of “protection” and threaten anyone who wanted to call the police. The police finally caught up with Gogi after a deadly stand-off between him and his rival in 2016. However, he swiftly escaped police custody while on his way to a court hearing in Haryana, putting the police on his trail ever since.

Along with his accomplices, Gogi is suspected to have killed the Haryana-based singer Harshita Dahiya to make her brother-in-law a part of his gang. He has since been spotted at several crime scenes, but cops could never quite catch hold of him. That is, until he decided to go Starbucking.

Kuldeep Maan alias Fajja, a close associate of one of the capital city’s biggest gangsters, recently posted a photo of a Starbucks cup on Facebook. One of the cups pictured had the name Gogi spelled out (ironically, probably the first time a Starbucks employee didn’t fuck up someone’s name), effectively prompting police to scour all the Starbucks in the city until they narrowed down on a shop in Gurgaon and figured out his whereabouts. “We got information that Gogi and his gang members were living in a flat at Mapsko Casabella, Sector 82,” DCP (Special Cell) Manishi Chandra told The Indian Express, talking about how an arms dealer in the area led them to his exact location. “Accompanied by a SWAT team, special cell personnel surrounded Block B-4. Finding no escape route, the men surrendered.”

Just goes to show how much good Starbucks could do if their employees got the damn name on the cup right once in a while.

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