GANGSTERS TURN ICONS
Some 100 gangs and 500 gangsters at large with a fan following among the youth and glorification in cinema, song and social media is the suicidal gain of Punjab’s harvest of guns
There are 100 gangs in Punjab with 500 trigger-happy gangsters footloose and fancy free besides those godfathering crime from jails where they are lodged.
There are over 100 gangs in Punjab with some 500 trigger-happy gangsters footloose and fancy free besides those godfathering crime from the jails where they are lodged. Police sources say the state is in for tough times at the hands of these gangsters more so with Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) and hardliners hiring them to do the needful.
Even though it’s 15 minutes of fame, inter-gang rivalry in Punjab is multiplying with new recruits eager to join the gangs of loot, extortion and murder well knowing that the end is close in this game. Gangster activity is concentrated more in Kapurthala, Muktsar, Ludhiana, Moga, Jalandhar, Gurdaspur and Fazilka districts.
FEAR AND SUSPICION
In the drive through the dusty countryside in Punjab amid the hubbub of daily activity, the shadows of fear and suspicion loom large. The regal home of late gang leader Rupinder Gandhi standing tall in the fields of Rasoolra village near Khanna is heavily guarded by armed young men. The HT photographer and reporter are viewed with suspicion by three teenagers, a gun cocked at them, identity cards checked and they are asked to leave. A fair-faced adolescent of few words tells us, “Leave a phone number and the family will get back to you. We can’t let you in as no older person is at home.”
The dread is not without reason in the citadel of the Gandhi Group of Student Union (GGSU) with three lakh student members across Punjab. Ironically, Rupinder was given the second name of the Mahatma of non-violence as he was born on October 2. A national football player, he became a students’ leader in Panjab University and then the sarpanch of his village at 22. Involved in violent activity, he was picked up by a rival gang from Samrala, his knees and arms were broken. He was then hung from a tree, shot dead andthe body was thrown in the Bhakra canal in 2003.
His older brother, Manminder Singh Aujla, alias Mindhi Gandhi, who worked in a construction company in the UK, returned home and took charge of his kid brother’s Robinhood mission and formed the GGSU, got involved in violence and tried to shoot Lakhi, the main accused behind Rupinder’s murder. Mindhi too was gunned down this August shortly before the release of the second film allegedly by one of the GGSU members for trying to get cheap publicity by making films on their revered leader, Rupinder.
EASY PREY
The gangs of Punjab have emerged as a post-terrorism, post-liberalisation and post-globalisation phenomenon with aspirations of the youths rising without the requisite education, employment skills or patience to work hard for moderate gains. They fall easy prey to unprincipled politicians and the gangster menace is being seen the next problem after drugs among suicidal youths of Punjab. Many a time, drugs and gangsters go hand in hand as both are consumers and peddlers.
With the suppression of terror in the 1990s by the state, how did the gun culture return? Patiala-based economist Sucha Singh Gill pins it down to politicians of varied hues, creating their own gun-toting guards. “In an article in the ‘Economic and Political Weekly’ in 2010, I had written about the indiscriminate issuing of arms licences. Sometimes young men have two to three guns on one licence. Student leaders and unemployed youths are drawn into this new corps, gaining dignity with a gun in hand,” he said.
Another student leader from an affluent agriculturist family of Ferozepur drawn into the gang culture and now running his gang from a Rajasthan jail on WhatsApp is Lawrence Bishnoi, a former student of DAV College, Sector 10, Chandigarh, and a leader of the Students Union of Panjab University (SOPU). Close to gangster Amandeep Singh, alias Happy Deora, he rose from student clashes to carjacking, kidnapping and extortion.
Ransom is the forte of Bishnoi’s gang.
SCHOOL DROPOUTS FROM THE MARGINS
Rupinder and Bishnoi are exceptions to the rule as they belonged to wealthy homes but the grist to the mill of gangsterism but the majority of boys who join the gangs come from homes of marginalised farmers with little by way of education and employment skills.
Harish K Puri, a political analyst, who has viewed the politics of Punjab from the people’s viewpoint and authored a study on ‘Terrorism in Punjab: Understanding Grassroots Reality’ along with Paramjit Judge and Jagroop Sekhon, says: “We found 90% of boys were school dropouts and came from poor homes, sometimes dysfunctional families, but had the good looks and pride of Punjabi Jats. Suffering from low self-esteem, they wanted to prove their worth in their own eyes. That situation has not changed in Punjab.”
Earlier, the brief Naxalite uprising and long years of militancy brought violence but a majority of the cadre was ideology-driven. However, the popularity of the gangster today lies in the fact that when delivery systems of the establishment have failed, gangsters provide instant justice with their aura in dispute cases, ranging from marital to agrarian in their ‘constituencies’. To the young, they also offer the thrill of bravado and thus the abundance of likes on social media.
GANGSTER ACTIVITY IS CONCENTRATED MORE IN KAPURTHALA, MUKTSAR, LUDHIANA, MOGA, JALANDHAR, GURDASPUR AND FAZILKA DISTRICTS