The Twilight of the Gangs in UP

On February 14th, 1981, almost 40 years ago, ‘Bandit Queen’ Phoolan Devi and her gang went on a shooting spree at the nondescript village of Behmai in Kanpur Dehat, killing 20 members of the dominant Thakur community. This gruesome incident in the village, some 170 kilometres from Lucknow, was in retaliation against an alleged incident when two members of the caste—Lala Ram and Sri Ram—raped Phoolan. She surrendered to the police in 1983 and, more than a decade later, became a Member of Parliament from Mirzapur. Phoolan was shot dead outside her New Delhi residence on July 25th, 2001.

Since the Behmai incident, law and order has been the most debated issue in Uttar Pradesh (UP), beginning with the term of Vishwanath Pratap Singh as Chief Minister in 1980. Almost a decade later, VP Singh would take office as Prime Minister in a Union Government led by his Janata Dal. But Chief Minister VP Singh’s government in UP had launched a campaign against the dacoits of the Chambal valley spread across Etawah-Agra in UP and Bhind-Morena in Madhya Pradesh (MP), leading to a large number of encounter killings by the police. Many of these were fake encounters, based on alleged atrocities by the dominant Rajput caste against the politically resurgent Other Backward Classes (OBCs). Behmai was a natural progression of caste hostilities unleashed during VP Singh’s tenure as Chief Minister. Singh ultimately resigned in July 1981 after the massacre.

In an orchestrated public spectacle in February 1983, Phoolan Devi surrendered to the authorities, laying her .315 mm Mauser rifle at the feet of then MP Chief Minister Arjun Singh. Eleven years later, in 1994, UP Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav facilitated her release from jail. She was later nominated as a Samajwadi Party (SP) candidate and elected to Lok Sabha.

From 1980 to 2020, the opposition has raised the law and order issue in every session of the UP Assembly through adjournment notices and caused trouble in the House. No political party ever attempted to highlight the reasons for the deterioration in law and order or to analyse whether the challenge to law and order was posed by a churn in society as part of the development process, upsetting the status quo and engendering new social and political faultlines.

These socio-political faultlines are the main reason why—despite the most effective campaign in the last five decades against organised criminal gangs by the Yogi Adityanath government, including the demolition of property and seizure of wealth acquired through crime (running into several billion rupees)—there is no let-up in caste-driven crime. This was demonstrated most recently by the attack on a 19-year-old Dalit woman in Hathras district who died in a Delhi hospital on September 29th, after suffering major injuries.

Since 1989, after the decline of the Congress and the advent of the Janata Dal government headed by Mulayam Singh in UP, ‘jungle raj’ has become the most potent political currency in state politics, with most opposition leaders accusing the incumbent government of failing to check crime. The situation turned worse in the 1991 UP Assembly elections when the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) main poll plank was “Bhaya Mukt Samaj” ( a society free from fear). Riding the Ram Mandir wave after the kar sewa in Ayodhya in October 1990, the BJP formed the state government for the first time in June 1991. It was headed by Kalyan Singh. His administration launched a crackdown against criminals who had enjoyed political patronage during Mulayam Singh’s tenure (December 1989-June 1991) and many criminals were gunned down in police encounters or put behind bars. The Kalyan Singh government did not last long however, and was dismissed on December 6th, 1992, the day the disputed structure in Ayodhya was demolished.

After a year-long spell of President’s Rule, an SP-Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) coalition headed by Mulayam Singh took office on December 3rd, 1993. Meanwhile, new political forces had been unleashed in a society already riven by caste hatred. This period saw the rise of caste-based identity politics, following the announcement of the implementation of the Mandal Commission report that advocated reservations in jobs and education for OBCs. At the same time, the BSP’s rise championed the cause of the Bahujan Samaj in UP’s social matrix. The BSP claimed to represent over 85 per cent of the population, comprising Dalits, OBCs and Muslims. The October 1990 kar sewa in Ayodhya contributed a lot to a simultaneous Hindu consolidation.

The most obvious outcome of identity politics is entitlement. Anti-social elements from the Muslim and OBC communities were the major beneficiaries of such political entitlement. Muslims in the world of crime—particularly those with crime syndicate links involving drugs and arms smuggling, enjoyed safe havens in the Nepal-bordering districts of eastern UP like Bahraich, Balrampur, Gorakhpur and Maharajganj—earned the most advantage from the newly unleashed competitive politics of appeasement fuelled by the SP, BSP and the Congress. The dependence of the so-called secular parties on Muslim leaders with suspect backgrounds and deep pockets increased in the following years. The turning points in polarisation and violence came in 1990 and then in 1992.

The SP, however, has been questioning the narrative on law and order promoted by the Adityanath government since the BJP came to power in UP in March 2017. Ram Govind Chaudhary, leader of the opposition in the UP Assembly, has said: “The government is creating a false narrative about law and order, which has been accepted by the masses. The government says there was a ‘gunda raj’ during the SP’s stint in government where criminals, especially Yadavs and Muslims, were patronised by the ruling party.”

Brij Lal, former director general of police in UP, counters this. He says that since its inception in late 1992, the SP has promoted mafia elements as a considered electoral strategy. He lists a series of incidents of serious crime that occurred under the regimes of Mulayam Singh and, later, his son Akhilesh Yadav, where mafia gangs, particularly those led by Muslim ganglords, were given a free run and police officers were directed to ignore the activities of Mukhtar Ansari and Atique Ahmed, both currently in jail. “The mafia gangs of UP, even in their worst nightmare, had never thought that the police could ever be so ruthless against them. It’s unfortunate that the campaign against organised crime by the Adityanath government has failed to find favour with the media, thanks to the ongoing Narcotics Control Bureau investigations against film stars in Mumbai and other political issues like protests against the agriculture legislation recently passed by Parliament,” Lal rues.

For the last three decades of active political patronage, mafia-turned-politicians acquired huge wealth by forcibly occupying Gram Samaj land (belonging to the village council), property listed as belonging to the enemy and/or evacuees, Waqf property and the land of the poor across the state. They indulged in illegal cattle trade, including illegal slaughter and smuggling to Bangladesh via Bihar and West Bengal, with impunity. According to Brij Lal, there is a long list of criminals promoted by Mulayam Singh since he became Chief Minister in December 1989. They included names such as Arun Shukla, DP Yadav of Ghaziabad, Kamlesh Pathak of Etawah (currently in jail), Madan Bhaiyya of Meerut, Atique Ahmed of Prayagraj, Mukhtar Ansari and his elder brother Afzal Ansari (currently BSP MP from Ghazipur), Ramakant Yadav and Umakant Yadav, Baleshwar Yadav and Om Prakash Paswan of Gorakhpur, and so on.

There was an incident in 2004, involving Mukhtar Ansari, an Independent MLA lodged in a Punjab jail. As Lal tells it, Ansari’s mobile number was put under surveillance by the Special Task Force (STF) of the UP Police. The STF had specific information that Ansari was about to buy a light machine gun, which could fire 550 rounds a minute, on February 25th/26th, 2004 from Varanasi. The seller was a Rashtriya Rifles deserter. A nephew of Munna Yadav, Mukhtar Ansari’s gunner, was nabbed by Shailendra Pratap Singh, the DSP in Varanasi. A case under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) was registered against Ansari and six others. Now, under POTA, the state government’s approval is mandatory for filing the chargesheet. However, Chief Minister Mulayam Singh refused permission for filing the chargesheet against Ansari. The other five were convicted under POTA. Shailendra Pratap Singh resigned from service in November 2005.

Ansari’s mansion in his native village in Ghazipur district is known as ‘Faatak’ (fortress). Most people knew ‘Faatak’ as the usual hideout for hardened criminals and a favoured meeting place for members of listed mafia gangs. As the story goes, once, the then SSP of the STF, Raj Kumar Vishwakarma, had specific information that Mukhtar Ansari’s gang was planning to eliminate his political rival and sitting BJP MLA Krishnanand Rai, from Mohammadabad Assembly constituency of Ghazipur district, and that the gangsters were hiding at ‘Faatak’. This was in November 2005. Vishwakarma informed his superiors and asked permission to raid the premises. Permission was denied. The BJP MLA was killed in a shootout and as many as 67 bullets penetrated his body. Six other persons accompanying Rai were also killed. The gangsters used AK47, AK56 and G3 rifles to kill Rai and his men. According to Lal, the G3 rifles were confiscated by the Indian army from Pakistani soldiers during the 1971 war and many Indian armymen took unauthorised possession of these. The rifles ultimately reached the gangs of Chambal. The dreaded gang of Noida, Mahendra Fauji and Malkhan Singh, dacoits of Chambal, all possessed G3 rifles that can fire 600 rounds a minute. The UP Police, on the other hand, were equipped with only .303 calibre rifles.

Another instance when Mulayam Singh came directly to the rescue of Muslim radical elements was in January 1993, when Brij Lal himself was SSP of Meerut. Local Muslims had decided to boycott Republic Day celebrations at the behest of Bihar leader and MP Syed Shahabuddin of the All India Babri Masjid Coordination Committee. At Imliyan, close to Meerut, many Muslims had gathered to protest. A hand grenade was lobbed at the camp of the Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) whereby Havildar Sharma of 11 BN PAC, Ghaziabad, was killed. For the first time, RDX was recovered from the accused in UP. Such a serious incident could have caused a communal conflagration but it was prevented. Five individuals, all Muslim, were arrested and booked under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA). UP was then under President’s Rule. Mulayam Singh became Chief Minister for the second time in December 1993 and soon, the UP government, citing “public interest”, moved an application in the district court of Meerut for the withdrawal of the case. The court questioned the public interest angle and the application was rejected. The five accused were convicted and handed a rigorous imprisonment.

Despite his youthful image, Akhilesh Yadav was no different as Chief Minister, according to Lal. He ordered the withdrawal of cases concerning the serial blasts at the Lucknow, Varanasi and Faizabad district courts on November 24th, 2007. Fifteen innocent people had been killed in the incidents. One of the accused, Khalid Mujahid, lodged in Lucknow jail, was taken to the Faizabad district court for appearance on the date of hearing. On May 19th, 2013, Mujahid died midway to Barabanki due to a heat stroke while being escorted back to the Lucknow jail after the hearing. The Akhilesh Yadav government ordered an FIR and filing of murder charges under Section 302 of the IPC against Brij Lal and retired DGP Vikram Singh. Lal retired from service in November 2014. The court later quashed the case against both officers. During the 2012 UP Assembly elections, Akhilesh had promised in his election manifesto that he would withdraw the cases against the innocent Muslim youth who, as per the manifesto, were framed in false cases. Akhilesh’s application for the withdrawal of cases against all the accused in the serial blasts case was challenged in the Allahabad High Court. The court restrained the UP government from taking further action with the contention that the state government alone was not competent to decide on the withdrawal of these cases and that the accused were booked under Union law. Therefore, the Centre’s consent was necessary for withdrawal of the cases. In December 2019, after 12 years of investigation and trial, Additional District Judge Ashok Kumar of the Faizabad court, awarded life imprisonment to two terrorists—Tariq Azmi and Mohammad Akhtar—for the November 2007 blast on the Faizabad district court premises. Tarik Azmi of Azamgarh and Mohammad Akhtar of Ramban, Kashmir, were also handed life sentences in the Lucknow court blast case on August 27th, 2018.

Political scientist AK Verma, director of the Centre for the Study of Society and Politics, Kanpur, contends that veteran Congress leader Kamlapati Tripathi had, in 1971, first expressed concern about the entry and assimilation of criminals into politics. Verma says that the last 50-year period could be broadly divided into three phases—criminalisation of politics, politicisation of criminals, and the “mafia-isation” of politics. For all those who matter in the polity—be it in the Mumbai film world, the political class or the corporate world—there was a close nexus with criminals, although only the nexus between politicians-police and criminals was widely known.

According to Verma, Yogi Adityanath is the first Chief Minister, in any state, to launch such an aggressive campaign against organised crime. “This is Yogi Adityanath’s brand of disruptionist politics. He is the first Chief Minister, in any state, to have caught the mafia bull by its horns. The anti-mafia campaign will reclaim lost territory for the state and is a huge step towards cleaning up politics.” He adds: “Yogi Adityanath is doing what a welfare state is required to do. Earlier there was welfare only for criminals. It’s for the first time that the government is actually working for the welfare of the common people.” He posits the Chief Minister’s deliberately showcased policy of war on the mafia and organised crime against the larger public demand for a clean politics. “We need a nationwide campaign along the same lines to uproot the influence of organised crime on society, taking off from Adityanath’s own campaign. That way, this national problem will be battled across states and uprooted successfully; the battle should not be confined to UP alone. The campaign would bring spectacular results if it were to be launched in all big states,” he says.

Verma also says that the success rate of the UP government’s campaign was very high, especially since Adityanath had not targeted the politicians first but chosen, in a calculated manner, to target the nexus of the politician-criminals and the police. Had he targeted the politicians first, he would have faced accusations of vendetta politics, triggering a nationwide furore. Even his own partymen would have been scorched. As the mafia gangs are neutralised and their ill-gotten wealth seized, their commercial buildings taken over and demolished, the other two groups in the chain—the politicians and the police—would automatically fall in line. Persisting with the old ways would mean being unceremoniously ousted, with stringent penalties.

Spelling out the difference between SP and BSP candidates, in this context, one political observer maintains that BSP candidates were drawn from the local elite of all castes and they depend on the Dalit vote bank, making it easy for party supremo Mayawati to exercise control over them. But in the case of the SP, the district leaders were like local warlords with deep pockets and they also controlled the local party machinery. Thus, they were less vulnerable to the party’s disciplinary whip. The BJP, though, has had a different system of operating locally. Some call it a hybrid of the SP and BSP systems. Yet, the organisation of the BJP, backed by the secretary (organisation) of the RSS, was far better equipped to control party legislators and other divisional leaders.

Mrityunjay Kumar, Adityanath’s media advisor, asserts that UP is making a decisive break with the past on law and order. A deteriorating law and order situation, which had for long been UP’s bane, had reached its nadir during the the SP regime.

Adityanath has taken on the menace with full force. This has resulted in the elimination of over 100 and the arrest of over 10,000 dreaded criminals. It has not only broken the sway of anti-socials but also restored people’s confidence in government and police. “Those who accuse the government of pursuing an ‘encounter policy’ should realise that there is no such formal policy. It’s just a matter of giving operational freedom to the police to tackle crime,” he maintains.

According to a senior police officer from the state, the sharp rise in economic prosperity since the reforms unleashed in 1991 and the rise in tandem of mafiosi in politics were not a coincidence. The liberalisation of the economy—particularly the real estate sector—led to a sharp rise in demand for sand, stone and other building materials. The mafiosi focused their attention on the lucrative business of illegal mining and minted billions of rupees during the next three decades.

Under the UPA Government, the finance ministry, on directions from the Supreme Court in 2011, had assigned a study to the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP) on the extent of black money in the economy, including its generation and circulation. The report was submitted to the Government in 2012 but never tabled in Parliament. However, the leaked content on mining and real estate identified these sectors as major areas of generating black money and was circulated mainly in opening new educational institutions—engineering, medical colleges and private universities. During the last three decades, a number of private educational institutions mushroomed in UP, particularly in western UP. Many of these are owned by mafia-turned-politicians. One of the most prominent of such institutions is the Global University in Saharanpur promoted by a BSP leader. He is under investigation on Supreme Court orders.

The mafia flourished thanks to the SP’s and BSP’s open political patronage for their own political ends and vote banks. The two parties not only provided political protection to tainted individuals but also facilitated the mainstreaming of mafia elements by giving tickets for their entry into the state legislature and Parliament. Criminals-turned-politicians like Hari Shankar Tiwari, Virendra Pratap Shahi, Atique Ahmad, Mukhtar Ansari, Vijay Mishra, Uday Bhan Singh, DP Yadav, Madan Bhaiyya, Umakant Yadav, Ramakant Yadav, Sonu Singh, Monu Singh, Pawan Pandey, Aruna Shankar Shukla ‘Anna’, and so on, did not happen overnight.

“The free run of the mafia could not have gone on indefinitely; it had to end one day. That day came with the encounter with the Vikas Dubey gang of Kanpur when eight policemen were killed. Vikas Dubey managed to escape but later died in a road accident while being brought back to Kanpur from Ujjain by the UP Police,” says the officer. The massacre of the eight policemen, however, did not get the attention of ordinary people and the media. Instead, the media focused on Dubey’s death, calling it an outrageous occurrence and raising questions. The media also compared it with the Hyderabad Police’s killing of four criminals accused of rape and murder. Those killings had happened, apparently, on an evidence-gathering mission at night. “It is facetious to compare these two incidents. The Telangana killing was clearly a criminal act by the police,” the officer points out.

Dubey was a criminal who had a history of challenging the sanctity of constitutional institutions and the judiciary. In the early 2000s, he killed the then Minister of State, Santosh Shukla, inside the premises of a court and was absolved. It made him unrestrained, as was evident in the manner he killed the eight policemen. He seemed to believe that he would not be touched by the authorities. But Dubey did not factor in the resolve of the Adityanath government.

The officer maintains that contrary to the encounter in Hyderabad, Dubey was killed after he tried to escape, taking advantage of the situation as the police van carrying him overturned. Dubey had allegedly snatched the rifle of a policeman accompanying him and opened fire at the police party. Two constables sustained injuries. The police returned fire to minimise further casualties and, in this fracas, Dubey was killed on July 10th. The four accused in the Hyderabad case had no prior charges against them. In contrast, Dubey had 64 criminal cases against him and was a notorious history-sheeter, carrying a reward of Rs 5 lakh on his head.

The matter of the Vikas Dubey encounter is pending in the Supreme Court. Before the court stepped in, the UP government itself had appointed a commission of inquiry. One more member was added on the direction of the Supreme Court. The UP government has also set up a Special Investigation Team (SIT) for probing Dubey’s crimes, his political connections and other activities, reaching right up to the top from where he apparently drew his ‘protection’. Approximately 4,000 encounters have taken place in Adityanath’s term.

As a result, many criminals with rewards on their heads are surrendering at police stations while holding up placards. Any mafia gang can be demolished if its financial backbone is broken. The Adityanath government has done it with precision and attacked the illegal financial networks of the mafiosi and the gangs. In a planned manner in western UP, the properties of gangsters such as Badan Singh Baddo, Anil Dujana, Sunder Bhati, Udhan Singh Karnawal, Manish Chauhan, Yogesh Bhadaura and Amit Kasana were attached or demolished. This dealt them a crushing blow. Brij Lal says: “It is only a matter of time before the UP government destroys the empire of the mafia gangs and makes UP a safer and saner place for the common people.”

crimegangsMukhtar AnsariUttar PradeshVikas Dubey