Mini Chambal
West Champaran is dacoits' homeland
Ram Badan Yadav of Yogapatti in West Champaran district is a worried man these days. He is worried about his status in society. "I have to remove my moustache as my father has died," he laments. In this north-western region of Bihar, guns and curled-up moustaches signify authority.
"The district is known for 2Ms," says a forest officer, meaning moustaches and mosquitoes. Moustache is the mark of a dacoit in the district where 200-odd gangs of bandits thrive under the patronage of influential landlords and half a dozen estate owners belonging to Rajput, Bhumihar and Kayastha communities, and Ramnagar royal dynasty.
Dacoity has been West Champaran's bane for long, and it worsened during the 15-year Rashtriya Janata Dal rule in the state. "The Lalu [Prasad Yadav]-Rabri Devi rule extended overt support to law-breakers in a big way," alleges Baristar Rao, a resident of Bathwaria. The period saw bureaucrats and government contractors cosy up to bandit Bhanger Yadav alias Bihar Sarkar, who has 107 criminal cases against him and is an 'absconder' for the last 25 years.
While Bhanger's younger brother Sattan Yadav won the Assembly elections in 1995 before being arrested and jailed in criminal cases, his son Amar Yadav lost the Assembly elections on RJD ticket in 2000, but managed to be the zilla parishad chairman in 2001. Another dacoit, Nandlal Gaur, who is out on bail after serving several years in prison in three dozen cases, managed to get his wife elected as the sarpanch of ?Bathwaria panchayat.
The dubious history of the district is well-recorded in the district gazette as well. R.E. Swanzy, a British officer who stayed in the region for a few months in 1929, had dubbed it as the 'university of criminals'.
Notably, one of the first cases of kidnapping in the state was registered in West Champaran in 1981. The same year, a district and sessions judge, Padma Narain Singh, while hearing the bail petition of a dacoit, noted down: 'West Champaran is mini Chambal'. As a policeman at Bathwaria police station points out, "This is the district of ganna [sugarcane], goonda [dacoit] and the Gandak [river]."
The district witnessed a massive convention of armed dacoits on August 18, 1995, at Bathwaria, where bandit Lalu Yadav inaugurated a Shiva temple.(The police later eliminated him.) They took out a march which was addressed by a police officer and another government officer, besides bandits.
The same year, dacoits hijacked a bus at Lauria and held 32 passengers hostage until they paid ransom. The year also witnessed the massacre of two dozen people in Ramnagar block who resisted dacoits' attempts to molest girls. It is said that it was a senior superintendent of police who had suggested the dacoits to turn to kidnapping for ransom in 1981. "The idea was to bring down the murder rate," says a senior journalist.
Dense forest, spread over 900 sq.km in the district, provides safe passage for the armed raiders while sand hills and caverns formed by the Gandak on its sprawling banks provide them shelter. Vast stretches of sugarcane fields render combing operations ineffective. After committing crimes, the dacoits seek refuge in neighbouring Nepal or Uttar Pradesh.
Interestingly, kidnapping is done irrespective of the victim's financial status. Hostages are freed when payment is made in cash if the victim is rich, or in kind if the captive owns land. While estate owners and feudal landlords enjoy the services of dacoits for financial gains in exchange for political patronage, it is the common man who mostly bears the brunt of the menace.
The government led two failed campaigns-Operation Black Panther and Operation Kidnapping in the late 1980s and the early 1990s-but a headway could be made only after the advent of the Special Task Force, which gunned down notorious dacoits like Lalu Yadav, Suresh Gaur and Vinod Yadav.
Realising that people take to guns when there is no other means to resist the atrocities of feudal landlords and the police, the Nitish Kumar government has offered packages to surrendering dacoits. The move seems to be working: Anirudh Sharma, a guard who claims to have been framed by local landlords, surrendered on August 17. "A dozen more dacoits have offered to surrender," says a police officer.
The villagers had formed their own armed security force, Gram Suraksha Dal, to tackle dacoity some time back, but that is defunct now. Despite frequent encounters and the STF vigil, West Champaran is surely not becoming what Gandhi once called it-'the land of ahimsa'. The reason is, as journalist Abhay Mohan Jha points out, "Becoming a dacoit is a road to politics, to grab land and to glamorise oneself."
West Champaran is dacoits' homeland
Ram Badan Yadav of Yogapatti in West Champaran district is a worried man these days. He is worried about his status in society. "I have to remove my moustache as my father has died," he laments. In this north-western region of Bihar, guns and curled-up moustaches signify authority.
"The district is known for 2Ms," says a forest officer, meaning moustaches and mosquitoes. Moustache is the mark of a dacoit in the district where 200-odd gangs of bandits thrive under the patronage of influential landlords and half a dozen estate owners belonging to Rajput, Bhumihar and Kayastha communities, and Ramnagar royal dynasty.
Dacoity has been West Champaran's bane for long, and it worsened during the 15-year Rashtriya Janata Dal rule in the state. "The Lalu [Prasad Yadav]-Rabri Devi rule extended overt support to law-breakers in a big way," alleges Baristar Rao, a resident of Bathwaria. The period saw bureaucrats and government contractors cosy up to bandit Bhanger Yadav alias Bihar Sarkar, who has 107 criminal cases against him and is an 'absconder' for the last 25 years.
While Bhanger's younger brother Sattan Yadav won the Assembly elections in 1995 before being arrested and jailed in criminal cases, his son Amar Yadav lost the Assembly elections on RJD ticket in 2000, but managed to be the zilla parishad chairman in 2001. Another dacoit, Nandlal Gaur, who is out on bail after serving several years in prison in three dozen cases, managed to get his wife elected as the sarpanch of ?Bathwaria panchayat.
The dubious history of the district is well-recorded in the district gazette as well. R.E. Swanzy, a British officer who stayed in the region for a few months in 1929, had dubbed it as the 'university of criminals'.
Notably, one of the first cases of kidnapping in the state was registered in West Champaran in 1981. The same year, a district and sessions judge, Padma Narain Singh, while hearing the bail petition of a dacoit, noted down: 'West Champaran is mini Chambal'. As a policeman at Bathwaria police station points out, "This is the district of ganna [sugarcane], goonda [dacoit] and the Gandak [river]."
The district witnessed a massive convention of armed dacoits on August 18, 1995, at Bathwaria, where bandit Lalu Yadav inaugurated a Shiva temple.(The police later eliminated him.) They took out a march which was addressed by a police officer and another government officer, besides bandits.
The same year, dacoits hijacked a bus at Lauria and held 32 passengers hostage until they paid ransom. The year also witnessed the massacre of two dozen people in Ramnagar block who resisted dacoits' attempts to molest girls. It is said that it was a senior superintendent of police who had suggested the dacoits to turn to kidnapping for ransom in 1981. "The idea was to bring down the murder rate," says a senior journalist.
Dense forest, spread over 900 sq.km in the district, provides safe passage for the armed raiders while sand hills and caverns formed by the Gandak on its sprawling banks provide them shelter. Vast stretches of sugarcane fields render combing operations ineffective. After committing crimes, the dacoits seek refuge in neighbouring Nepal or Uttar Pradesh.
Interestingly, kidnapping is done irrespective of the victim's financial status. Hostages are freed when payment is made in cash if the victim is rich, or in kind if the captive owns land. While estate owners and feudal landlords enjoy the services of dacoits for financial gains in exchange for political patronage, it is the common man who mostly bears the brunt of the menace.
The government led two failed campaigns-Operation Black Panther and Operation Kidnapping in the late 1980s and the early 1990s-but a headway could be made only after the advent of the Special Task Force, which gunned down notorious dacoits like Lalu Yadav, Suresh Gaur and Vinod Yadav.
Realising that people take to guns when there is no other means to resist the atrocities of feudal landlords and the police, the Nitish Kumar government has offered packages to surrendering dacoits. The move seems to be working: Anirudh Sharma, a guard who claims to have been framed by local landlords, surrendered on August 17. "A dozen more dacoits have offered to surrender," says a police officer.
The villagers had formed their own armed security force, Gram Suraksha Dal, to tackle dacoity some time back, but that is defunct now. Despite frequent encounters and the STF vigil, West Champaran is surely not becoming what Gandhi once called it-'the land of ahimsa'. The reason is, as journalist Abhay Mohan Jha points out, "Becoming a dacoit is a road to politics, to grab land and to glamorise oneself."