Authorities captured the drug lord “El Indio” on Tuesday, who is suspected of being involved with a spate of beheadings which have plagued the Tulua area in the western Colombian Valle del Cauca department.
El Indio, who allegedly replaced the notorious “Comba” brothers as leader of Colombia’s largest criminal gang “Los Rostrojos” after one of them surrendered to U.S. authorities, will be investigated for his connections to the beheadings which have scourged the region since April.
Dismembered heads, legs and arms and half a dozen tortured corpses were discovered with notes made from newspaper cuttings pinned to them in the style of the Mexican Cartels. The devastated region has seen over 130 murders this year alone.
Authorities say that the spate of murders is related to infighting in the gang caused by the May surrender of “Comba” and the June capture of the gang’s military commander Diego “Rastrojo” in Venezuela. However, the victims also include tradespeople, taxi-drivers and food vendors who allegedly did not pay extortion money to the deadly gang.
Colombian police have lately been tightening the net around the gang which reportedly controls the drug trade in one third of Colombia’s 32 departments. El Indio’s arrest comes on the same day Antioquian police reported the arrests of a further seven of the gang’s members.
The criminal gang allegedly have between 1,200 and 1,600 members and have ties to illegal Colombian groups the FARC and the ELN as well as with Mexican Cartels.