Rakesh Dixit
Ashok Vir Vikram Singh alias Bhaiya Raja, who had shrewdly managed the mystique of Robin Hood-Sultana Daku combine woven around his over six-foot tall persona in his life time, was actually a coward rapist. It was a sordid combination of factors–helpful media, feudal dominance in Bundelkhand, casteist politics and his rank opportunism– that conspired to transform a lecherous criminal into the ‘terror of Bundelkhand’.
On December 15, Bhaiya Raja got his overdue comeuppance for his innumerable sins.
Once a terror in Bundelkhand, the two-time MLA died of brain haemorrhage in a Bhopal hospital.. He was serving life sentence for getting bumped off Vasundhara Bundela, a student of fashion designing and his grandniece. Bhaiya Raja had sexually exploited her and had also forced her to undergo abortion.
It took well over 40 years for his nemesis to finally catch up with the perpetrator of at least a dozen murders and myriad rapes. By quirk of fate the nemesis proved to be his own grandniece whose bullet-riddled body was found lying under mysterious circumstances on December 11, 2009 near Misrod in Bhopal district.
His wife Asha Rani, too, in June 2010 was booked for abetment to suicide. A woman Tijji Bai was found dead in Yashodhara Parisar residence in Bhopal of Bhaiya Raja in 2007. Apart from Asha Rani, Bhaiya Raja was booked under the charges of rape in the incident.
When I first met Bhaiya Raja in 1985 at his house in Pavai, I secretly wondered whether he will die of illness or by bullet. I thought —wished?–someone would shoot him down soon, given the kind of terror he had unleashed on people of the region. I knew practically nothing about him. It was a KG Gupta’s report in Satna edition of ‘Desh Bandhu’ that drew my attention on his offences. The edition was launched to coincide with campaigning for the assembly election. I as news editor was tasked by the owner Mayaram Surjan ( Babuji) to launch the paper.
KG Gupta, our city reporter, had filed a detailed report on gory campaigning of Bhaiya Raja, mentioning the candidate’s track record. The campaign largely revolved around the slogan, “Muhar Lagegi Haathi Par, Varna Goli Ghalihe Chhati Par , Lash Milegi Ghati Par.( If you don’t vote for the Elephant election symbol, be prepared to take a bullet on the chest and your body being found in the valley).
The slogan was, of course, not officially sanctioned by Bhaiya Raja himself, but he was secretly pleased by its coinage by his supporters. The report, particularly the slogan fascinated me. I asked KG Gupta to accompany me to Pavai to meet Bhaiya Raja. Swami Trivedi, MP correspondent of ‘Ravivar’ weekly magazine, also happened to be in Satna that day and we decided to take him along. Swami was my friend from Jabalpur.
All through the four-hour car drive from Satna to Pavai, KG Gupta filled me with real and apocryphal stories about Bhaiya Raja’s crime saga; how he kills his enemies and get the bodies dumped in his private pond for domesticated alligators to feed on them; how his nomination as chairman of the Panna district cooperative bank instantly ensured cent percent recovery of the long dead loans of the defaulters; how he satisfies his seemingly uncontrollable libido by terrorising poor women with pythons in his house in Gaharwar fort.
Hearing all this, I was more anguished than amused. But, unmindful of my reactions, KG Gupta kept gushing on Bhaiya Raja’s real and imagined escapades. He was clearly in thrall of the terrorist. Gupta claimed himself to be Bhaiya Raja’s friend. His narration had an unmistakable streak of obsequiousness to the ‘hero’. I would later discover that Bhaiya Raja humours a horde of scribes in Bundelkhand to plant exaggerated stories of terror tactics. That helped him fortifying the legend he aspired to become. I also would come to know later that the alligators he allegedly used to feed on human bodies were too small to do so. Also, the terror-by-python tale turned out to be bunkum.
Gupta’s friendship claim proved true when we met Bhaiya Raja. Over six-foot tall, bearded man in long Kurta-pyjama greeted KG Gupta with condescending warmth. Gupta introduced me and Swami, saying we have come to cover the campaigning. Assuming that Gupta must have briefed us about his exploits, Bhaiya Raja looked pleased. I did cover the campaign but sans all the hype surrounding it. Bhaiya Raja lost the election.
After the introduction, I had had a couple of meetings with him before he was arrested for murdering a relative of then union home minister Sardar Buta Singh in a farm house of Nainital. The farm house allegedly belonged to Akbar Ahmad Dumpy, a one-time notorious ally of late Sanjay and subsequently Menaka Gandhi. It was his driver, not Bhaiya Raja himself, who had allegedly committed the murder. It later transpired that Bhaiya Raja and the slain Sikh had a drunken brawl. The bulky Sikh pushed Bhaiya Raja on the ground. Down and helpless, Bhaiya Raja goaded his driver to shoot at his assailant. The body was dumped in the valley nearby.
The high-profile murder brought Bhaiya Raja’s terror stories in national limelight. Captain Jaipal Singh, who had defeated Bhaiya Raja in 1985 assembly poll, was the state’s home minister. The captain was a trusted acolyte of the then chief minister Motilal Vora. The Vora government ordered shifting of Bhaiya Raja to Raipur jail of undivided Madhya Pradesh. However, the case could not stand for want of evidence and Bhaiya raja was acquitted. But the case had ensured widespread notoriety for him at national level.
Sudhir Saxena, the Madhya Pradesh correspondent of the then popular ‘Maya’ fortnightly, went a step further from KG Gupta and his ilk in “lionising’ Bhaiya Raja. He was portrayed as a sort of a combination of Robin Hood and Sultana Daku. While Captain Jaipal Singh felt he had avenged his election defeat, Bhaiya Raja was happy that myth-making machine was working nicely for him at state and national level.
The mythification worked wonder for Bhaiya Raja. While he was lodged in jail, his two wives begged for votes in the name of their Suhag in the Pavai constituency. The voters yielded to the begging. Bhaiya Raja won as independent candidate in the 1990 assembly polls.
Once in the assembly, his political ambitions began to soar. Politics for him was a useful tool to subdue the administration in his area of influence. Old friendship with former minister and Congress leader Mukesh Nayak came handy in politics. They were friends since the time Mukesh was youth Congress leader. Besides, Bhaiya Raja had already nurtured kinship with most of the Thakur leaders –various ‘Rajas’–of the ruling party of Bundelkhand and Vindhya regions.
Although the then chief minister Arjun Singh would maintain a discreet distance from Bhaiya Raja, Kunwar Sahab showed no qualm in letting the smaller feudal lord to carry out his criminal activities with near impunity. In fact, Bhaiya raja owed his election as chairman of Panna district cooperative bank to the strong Thakur bonding at the top. He was also a member of the 20-point programme committee. Moti Lal Vora later removed him from the committee when the Nainital murder case hogged the headline.
When he had come first time to Bhopal for oath-taking as an MLA, Bhaiya Raja led a huge procession of his supporters astride an elephant to famous Birla Mandir. A large number of youth Congress leaders were also part of the procession.
However, the time did not favour Bhaiya Raja. The regime had changed. The Patwa government showed no kindness to him. The then Chhatarpur SP Sarabjit Singh got Bhaiya Raja’s encroachment in the middle of a pond demolished. It was a sort of small fortress. The intrepid SP supervised razing of the fortress even as Bhaiya Raja and his band of brigands watched helplessly. This was the first major blow to his power that he had deviously fortified over three decades. Demoralised, he lay low biding for good time to return.
As the luck would have it, the Patwa government was dismissed in December, 1992 over the Babri issue. Next election was due in December 1993. Since Bhaiya Raja’s mafia activities had taken a severe knock under the BJP rule, he let Mukesh Nayak to contest from the Pavai seat. Mukesh won and became a minister in the Digvijay Singh cabinet. Digvijay Singh, like his mentor Arjun Singh, indulgedThakur politicians across political spectrum but kept Bhaiya Raja at bay in public.
This was a signal for clever Mukesh to start distancing himself from the man whose constituency he had won from. Mukesh could not or did not help Bhaiya Raja retain his official bungalow in the 45 Bungalows locality that was allotted to him three years ago.
I was witness to the scene when a large police posse swooped down on the bungalow to get it vacated. Bhaiya Raja meekly vacated the house under clear instruction from the then principal secretary, home, Vijay Singh. The so-called terror of Bundelkhand cut a pathetic figure before the might of the state.
Five years later, Bhaiya Raja was elected again, this time on Samajwadi party ticket. Mulayam Singh’s party managed to send five MLAs to the assembly and all of them had shady past. But who cared? That was the time when Amar Singh was calling shots in the SP and he was instrumental in getting ticket to Bhaiya Raja who was elected leader of his MLA group.
As expected, his role in the assembly would be to support the Digvijay Singh government whatever the issue. In return, the Congress government did not trouble the SP MLA.
Bhaiya raja’s trouble began when Uma Bharti succeeded Digvijay Singh in 2003 December. The fiery Sadhvi was the strongest Lodhi leader of Bundelkhand. She harboured visceral dislike for Thakurs in general and Bhaiya raja in particular.
As the political stock of Thakur leadership plummeted in Bundelkhand, all the ‘Rajas’ including Bhaiya Raja chose to be out of the harm’s way. Shivraj Singh Chouhan, another OBC, replaced Uma. Bhaiya raja had to wait till the next election for his political stock to go somewhat up. His wife Asha Rani won the 2008 assembly election on BJP ticket from Bijawar seat. Asha is Bhaiya Raja’s second wife whom he married as the first had begotten four daughters but no son.
A year later, the long arms of the law finally caught up with Bhaiya Raja when Vasundhara’s murder mystery was unravelled. He was arrested from Chhatarpur and in 2013 sentenced to life imprisonment. Within a year he died in a hospital.
The sordid saga of rise of Bhaiya Raja as terror is inextricably linked to the feudal culture of the Bundelkhand.
After India’s independence in 1947, the princely states of Bundelkhand agency were combined with those of the former Baghelkhand agency to form the province of Vindhya Pradesh which became an Indian state in 1950. On 1 November 1956, Vindhya Pradesh was merged into Madhya Pradesh.
The region is dotted with small and decaying feudatories. Their family heads love to be called Raja, regardless of their dwindling influence and wealth. Bhaiya Raja belonged to the small feudatory of Gaharwar village. Like most Rajas of the region, Ashok Vir vikram Singh grew up lording over poor villagers in and around Gaharwar. His family was educated. One of his elder brothers Indrajit Vikram Singh retired as DIG.
The social milieu in the one of the most backward regions in India was encouraging for feudals—big and small-to wield the gun and terrorise the poor.
Like more notorious mafia don of Uttar Pradesh, Raja Bhaiya, Bhaiya Raja too enjoyed family backing for his criminal activities. Many of these Rajas aligned themselves with dacoits who roamed in Bundelkhand in sixties and seventies. One of the dacoit gangs was led by Charlie Raja.
Two most dreaded gangs had a Thakur and a Brahmin as head respectively. Notorious dacoits like Pooran Sing alias Puja Babba, a Brahmin, had sizeable following among caste fellows. Likewise, Moorath Singh commanded loyalty of Thakurs including small time feudals. .
Bhaiya Raja, whose libido and criminal instincts were seemingly incontrollable, found willing allies among members of Thakur dacoit gangs.
After Moorat Singh surrendered in early seventies, his son Ram Singh was known to be close to Bhaiya Raja. They would extort money from contractors of tendu leaf collection. In mining contracts too, the underground and overground dacoits would extract share. Abduction for ransom was, of course, the most lucrative of all crimes that allowed Bhaiya Raja and his gang to flourish.
By the eighties Thakurs became a dominant political force, courtesy Arjun Singh rule. Heady mix of crime and politics sustained the reign of terror unleashed by Bhaiya raja.
But he was known to be more cruel than courageous. It is said he got all his killings credited to him done by his gang members. But in raping women he was merciless and rapacious.
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