Bandits & guns silent, dev on horizon for Chitrakoot’s Patha

CHITRAKOOT: Ram Niranjan, 49, still remembers how the silence of that August 2012 midnight was shattered by the staccato burst of AK-47 assault rifles, as dacoits of the Babli Kol gang arrived at his house in Doda Mafi, a Dalit dominated village in Chitrakoot’s sparsely populated rocky terrain that borders the jungles in the Patha region, and began firing discriminately.

Six of his family members were killed. Many bullets hit the walls of the house, leaving holes that even today are testimony to the brutality of those horrifying killings in this remote part of Bundelkhand bordering Madhya Pradesh.

Villagers feel that the killings were executed by Babli Kol, perhaps on the orders of his mentor Sudesh Patel alias Balkhadia, a dreaded dacoit who was eventually killed in a police encounter in 2015. After him, Kol came into his own, unleashing a reign of terror in the Chitrakoot region before he, too, met his inevitable fate, soon after the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. That’s why Niranjan says this is the first Lok Sabha election when his entire family will go out to vote without the shadow of dacoits.

“I don’t know why dacoits targeted my family. But the worst is perhaps over and this is the first Lok Sabha poll without the menace of dacoits and thus this time our family will go out to vote in the name of law and order, an issue that, along with employment, touches the poor the most,” Niranjan says.

“My youngest son, now 18, is going to be a first-time voter this time,” he says. A little distance away, another villager guides us to a freshly painted school in the village, which as per the notice on it, reads: “established 1956!”

“This is indeed a very old school but has only now seen the number of students increase. The teacher comes from Kaushambi, 50 km away,” says Dinesh Kumar Tiwari, 65, a local shopkeeper who vouches for terror of dacoits in each poll, until about 2019. “Back then, such was their fear that we would be locked up in our homes. Now, of course things have changed much,” Tiwari says.

Balkhadia and Thokia were perhaps the last of the prominent dacoits as, before them, two other dreaded dacoits had been killed in police encounters during BSP chief Mayawati’s stint as chief minister. While Shiv Kumar Patel alias “Dadua” was killed in a police encounter in July 2007, Ambika Patel alias “Thokia” ambushed a police party, killing six STF men.

“The difference between Dadua and Thokia was while Dadua rarely, if ever, targeted cops, Thokia was trigger happy and targeted the STF (Special Task Force) too, on July 22, 2007, but would issue appeals of support in favour of a political party. He didn’t survive long after that as he was killed in a police encounter in August 2008,” a local says.

“There could be some smaller bandits still hiding somewhere but as of now, due to pro-active policing, not many would muster courage,” said Prahlad Vishwakarma, a local carpenter.

As you drive along the region, there are sure signs of efforts by the government to make the region a hub of tourism. The Tulsi waterfall that is dry now and where the state’s first glass skywalk bridge is set to come up is one such effort.

“Shaped like Lord Ram’s bow and arrow, this bridge, when ready, would surely make it a premier eco-tourism destination. Work on this bridge has been delayed due to the contractor tasked with the exercise meeting with an accident,” says a watchman who guards the area. The architectural marvel is scheduled to be ready after the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

“Tourist footfalls would grow and with it the region would undergo a change. This region lacked such development earlier,” says Rajkumari, a local.