WHERE ARE THE DAKUS?
The bandits of the Chambal once spelt terror. After surrendering to the police and serving long jail terms, they now lead quiet lives as farmers and village elders
Driving from Agra to Gwalior, the beehad or ravines of Chambal become visible even before one approaches Morena, a district town in Madhya Pradesh. The undulating landscape, dotted with mud hillocks and thorny shrubs, spreads on both sides of the highway, the jungle cover thickening in the distance. From the highway, few signs of human settlement can be spotted in the ravines – a scattering of huts here and there and some temples along the road. “At one time the ravines of Chambal were home to many dacoit gangs. We were told stories about them as children. Today there are no dacoits in Chambal,” says the priest of one such temple along the AgraGwalior highway.
The last big police encounter with a dreaded dacoit – someone who could instil fear in the public – was 10 years ago, that of Rambabu Gadariya in 2007, says Umesh Joga, IG Chambal Zone, Madhya Pradesh. Smaller encounters have happened since. “Last year we killed another dacoit Bharosi Malla who had been absconding for many years. But he no longer had a fulltime organised gang,” he explains.
Over the years, many dacoits have surrendered to the police. In 1960, for example, 20 dacoits are said to have surrendered after being persuaded by Vinoba Bhave. Then in 1972, Mohar Singh, another big dacoit of the time, surrendered with 100 men from his gang and many others from smaller gangs. Other surrenders followed – Malkhan Singh and his gang in 1982, Balwant Singh Tomar, nephew of retired soldier and athlete-turned-dacoit Paan Singh Tomar, also in 1982, Phoolan Devi in 1983, Seema Parihar in 2000 and Renu Yadav in 2005, to name a few.
Having served prison time, these reformed bandits either live a life of retirement today, or are farmers, something that most of them were anyway engaged in before they took up arms. Like Phoolan Devi before her death, a few have also dabbled in politics, taken up a social cause or made television appearances, like Seema Parihar in the reality show Big Boss.
In an undated paper on Chambal dacoits available online, MZ Khan, at that time professor of criminology at the Institute of Criminology and Forensic Science, and DR Singh, then with the Bureau of Police Research and Development, write, “The offence of dacoity is by no means peculiar to any part of the country; yet in the (Chambal) valley it has certain features that set it apart from those perpetrated elsewhere. First, the permanent or semipermanent structure of gangs made up of members firmly committed to dacoity in a professional way, is rather unique.”
As a section in the Indian Penal Code, robery committed by more than five people is dacoity, says Joga. But in popular perception, dacoit gangs are mostly those living in jungles, riding horses and armed with rifles.
BECOMING BAAGHIS
The bandits of Chambal – the river flows through Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan and the ravines are spread across the three states – were as feared as they were well known. Tales of their exploits circulated not just in the region in which they operated, but spread as far as Mumbai, where they inspired many Bollywood daku films, mainly in the 1960s and ’70s – remember Sholay and Ramgarh’s Gabbar Singh? But the real-life inspirations for these reel characters scoff at Bollywood’s portrayal of the bandits. “For one, we never came charging on horses like they showed in Bollywood films. We used to travel on foot,” says Mohar Singh. Over eighty now, dressed in a dhoti-kurta and Nehru jacket, Mohar Singh is the picture of a respected village elder. But he confides that he had 400 cases of murder registered against him when he surrendered.
The tag of a dacoit, even a former one, sits uneasily on Malkhan Singh, even 35 years after his surrender. “We weren’t dacoits. We were baaghis (rebels),” says the 74-year-old. Embittered by what he calls frequent misrepresentation of facts in the media, he is reluctant to share his story. “There were 100 bighas of land that was the property of a temple in the village. Some people in the village wanted to take over the land. When I protested, they started implicating me in all sorts of false cases,” he says. “I was harassed and became a baaghi.” Balwant Tomar also blames society and the system for creating outlaws. “There are three mains reasons for someone becoming a baaghi – one, the village pradhan, two, the area thanedar and three, the patwari of the area. If these people deliver justice, no one need become a baaghi,” he says. The uncle-nephew duo turned bandits after a property dispute with a section of the extended family turned violent and resulted in their killing two members of the other faction “in retaliation and self defence”. While Paan Singh was killed in a police encounter in 1981, Balwant surrendered in 1982.
“It was a rural economy. The only occupation was agriculture. There would be a lot of land-related disputes. When the dispute would get stuck in a revenue court or a civil court for a long time, people lost patience. In case of a fight, if a grievous crime took place, they would run away to the ravines,” agrees Joga.
It wasn’t easy being a baaghi. “While crossing the river, we had to be careful of ghariyals. There was also a kind of thorny shrub, the sting of which was more dangerous than a bullet injury,” says Malkhan Singh. There were snakes, scorpions and wild animals to contend with. The bandits mostly lived in the open. “In the monsoons, we used to put up tarpaulin tents and take shelter under them,” says Munna Singh, also a former dacoit.
They would constantly be on the move to avoid detection. In the paper on the Chambal dacoits, MZ Khan and DR Singh observe, “Although for all practical purposes the bandits, while at large, forsake settled community life, they receive active popular support and supplies...” This support came not just in the form of provisions, but also help in evading arrest. It would also often extend to information about who could be a likely target for the dacoits to abduct. THE PRINCIPLED BANDIT
One reason for the villagers helping the bandits could be that the latter say that they never bothered the poor. “We would help the poor,” says Mohar Singh.
Things were, in fact, better in their time, feels Malkhan Singh. “No one dared harass a woman in my time,” he claims emphatically. Fifty-five-year-old former dacoit Hari Singh Parmar, and indeed most former dacoits HT spoke to, remembers giving money to get girls in the village married off if their families didn’t have the funds for their marriage. “I must have gotten about 30 girls married,” says Parmar.
Also, the dacoits never operated in their own village or ilaka. But if they were indeed such do-gooders, what of the hundreds of murder cases that were registered against them? Joga scoffs at the idea of the dacoit “as some Robin Hood like character”. But Tomar explains, “If anyone gave the police information about us – worked as mukhbirs or informers – we had to teach them a lesson.” One of the biggest crimes that Tomar says he and his uncle committed was killing nine people of the Gujjar community in a village and setting the village ablaze, after one of them turned police informer and led to the death of Balwant’s father, Matadin Tomar, in a police encounter. Old scores, the reason why they had become baghis in the first place, also needed to be settled.
For the most part though, the dacoits say they would concentrate on abductions for funds. “Sometimes people would be kidnapped in Delhi and Ghaziabad and brought to us. We would be given a certain amount and they would keep the rest of the ransom money,” says Renu Yadav, who was kidnapped by the late UP-based bandit Chandan Yadav and later forced to marry him and join his gang.
The dacoits dressed in police uniforms – right down to the caps and shoulder straps – to avoid detection. And they often carried better arms than the police, says Mohar Singh. Where did they get the police uniforms? “Nothing is difficult to obtain when you have the money to pay for it. We had our suppliers. The political leaders themselves would often help us, even with arms,” says Parmar, who says he used a Carbon in those days. Others say they had AK 47s. “Before elections the leaders would contact us. Dacoits would also do the propaganda for the leaders,” he says.
Of course that doesn’t mean the dacoits did not live in fear every minute. “The day you became a baaghi you knew that you were living in the shadow of death every hour of the day,” says Balwant Singh.
LIFE POST SURRENDER
Most of the bandits who surrendered have spent eight years or more in prison before being released. But their time as dacoits and jailbirds doesn’t seem to have impacted their integration in society. On the way to meet Munna Singh, a local points out his house to us. When asked whether people are still afraid of the former dacoit, he laughs. “What’s there to be scared of? He is old, like a grandfather,” says the man. Malkhan Singh is fondly referred to as “Daddaji” by associates.
Still, there are complaints. “The surrender package had included a job for one person from the family. But no one from my family was given a job. Even if one person gets a job it helps improve the living conditions of the entire family,” frets Munna Singh. Most of his brothers and nephews are farmers or work as contract workers.
Parmar on the other hand has been given the land promised to him to settle down, but says it is yet to be registered in his name. A bigger grouse for him is that the license for one rifle, which he says was promised to every surrendered dacoit for self-protection, is yet to be given to him. “A dacoit makes enemies. I live in fear for my and my family’s safety all the time.”
What inspired the surrender? The replies are vague. The offer of a good surrender package, says one, while another dacoit says, “We had had our revenge.” Perhaps, it was just exhaustion with life on the run, though none of them admit it.
Whatever the reason, the era of the infamous Chambal dacoits seems to have passed. “Two things have made it difficult for that kind of dacoit gangs to flourish here now ,” says Joga. “Roads have been constructed into the villages. Plus, everyone has mobile phones now, so it is easier for us to get information. We have also initiated many grievance redressal mechanisms to settle disputes quickly.”
A little outside Morena, as one crosses the bridge over the Chambal, groups of youngsters – men and women – can be seen taking the path down to the river, or sitting on its bank. A child plays on the edge of the
beehad. The area looks like any other picnic spot. The brooding shadow of the jungle in the distance appears less threatening than the dark alleys of a city often do.