LUCKNOW: Indian police have arrested the leader of a gang implicated in more than 250 serious crimes including murder and robbery, officials said. Mohammed Salim Qureshi, the boss of the 31-member gang in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh was arrested late on Thursday after one of five recent murder victims' mobile phones was tracked to him.

Qureshi has confessed to the crimes, senior Uttar Pradesh police chief Deepesh Juneja said, adding that officers were also closing in on other suspected gang members. “Their modus operandi was to offer people rides in cars or mini-vans and kill them” at desolate places after robbing the victims, Juneja in a call from Meerut said.

The gang also targeted elderly people living on their own and took the lives of at least 40 police officers, Juneja said. Uttar Pradesh, with a population of 180 million, has a reputation of being one of India's most crime-ridden states.

According to police records, 17,315 people were murdered in the past three years in the state, of which 5,482 cases were registered last year alone.—AFP