Munna Bajrangi was allegedly shot 10 times by the member of a rival gang as he walked out of his cell for tea, days after his wife said she feared for his life.
New Delhi: A day after a notorious Uttar Pradesh gangster was shot dead in a high-security ward at a Bagpat jail, four prison officials had been suspended and an inquiry launched. But uncertainty persisted over how exactly the murder happened — how was the weapon snuck in? — days after his wife publicly said his life was in danger and sought the chief minister’s intervention.
It was around 6 am Monday when Munna Bajrangi stepped out of his high-security cell for tea in the common area.
A few minutes later, he was dead. Another inmate, Sunil Rathi, had allegedly shot him 10 times — including twice in the head — with a .32 bore pistol in a ward guarded by five policemen and three jail staffers, and then thrown the weapon in a gutter.
According to police, Rathi, who belongs to a rival gang, opened fire after an argument. However, there is only one witness who gave a statement corroborating the police theory and no CCTV footage to see how it really happened.
The pistol was reportedly recovered 11 hours later. “We were told that the weapon was thrown in a drain inside the jail. We got it cleaned and recovered the weapon. We also found 10 cartridges from the spot,” Bagpat superintendent of police Jai Prakash said.
“For now, Sunil Rathi has been taken into custody right and is being interrogated. It is a serious incident and is being strictly looked into,” he added.
Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath has termed the killing “serious” and ordered a probe.
Describing the episode as a “major lapse by the local jail administration”, additional director general (ADG), prison, Chandra Prakash suspended jailor Uday Pratap Singh, his deputy Shivaji Yadav, head warder Arjinder Singh and warder Madhav Kuma.
“How could a prisoner lodged in a high-security prison have a pistol inside? There is a serious security breach and an investigation is being carried out to fix responsibility,” Prakash said. “A judicial inquiry will also be done. We will take strict action against those responsible,” he added.
‘Planned murder’
Bajrangi, who started his career in crime as a member of the Uttar Pradesh-based Mukhtar Ansari gang, entered police’s most-wanted list after he allegedly shot BJP MLA Krishnanand Rai and his six associates dead in 2005.
In the shootout, which police called the largest display of firepower in the state, over 400 bullets were fired using AK-47s and 67 bullets recovered from the seven bodies.
The gangster, who also faced several cases of extortion and other murders, was finally arrested in 2009 from Mumbai.
After his murder Monday, his wife Seema Singh alleged it was politically motivated and planned.
“This is an orchestrated murder by Bajrangi’s opponents in the ruling party in connivance with the special task force and jail staff. How can a prisoner sneak in a pistol and then open fire inside a high-security prison?” she asked.
“Where was the jail staff? Where were the warders? I was aware of this threat to my husband… and had been screaming about it, but no one listened. I even appealed to the CM, put applications in court against the STF, but to no avail. Today, they killed him,” she added.
Naming a few politicians, including a central minister who is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and some leaders of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), she said the STF was paid to execute the murder. She also pointed a finger at Alka Rai, Krishnanand Rai’s widow who is now an MLA.
“Bajrangi’s opponents in the ruling party did not want Bajrangi to establish himself in politics, so they wanted to eliminate him. Our case was nearing conclusion and they knew he would come out clean, so they wanted to kill him before that,” Seema said.
Just a week ago, Seema, at a press conference in Lucknow, had accused the special task force (STF) and some political leaders of conspiring to kill Bajrangi in an encounter or inside the jail. She claimed the jail administration in Jhansi, from where he was brought to Bagpat this Sunday, had tried to poison him.
“A jail staffer in Jhansi asked an inmate to poison Bajrangi and we have proof regarding the same,” Bajrangi’s lawyer V. Srivastava said.
He added that they had filed an application in connection with their allegations in a Banaras court.
“We have CCTV footage as proof. We filed an application in court naming the STF and a probe was initiated,” Srivastava added.
Lawyer questions shift to Bagpat jail
According to police, Bajrangi was shifted to Bagpat jail Sunday night for a court appearance in an extortion case. Interestingly, Rathi, too, was shifted to Bagpat jail from Roorkee recently.
“This is an indication that they hired Rathi to kill Bajrangi and hence coordinated their move to Bagpat jail,” Srivastava said.
He added that there was no court order necessitating Bajrangi’s move from Jhansi to Bagpat.
“We never received any order from the court stating that he should be moved to Bagpat jail. He just had to appear for a hearing, that too in a case of extortion over the phone, in which he has not been named as an accused either in the FIR or the chargesheet. Still he was taken from Jhansi jail to Bagpat,” Srivastava said.
According to the lawyer, Bajrangi was a heart patient and there was a court order in effect that stated he should only be shifted after he becomes fit.
“A deputy SP forced jail doctors to give a fitness certificate to Bajrangi so they could shift him to Bagpat, where they had planned to kill him,” he said, “This move was made just to murder him.”
Police refused to comment on the allegations.
Personal rivalry the motive?
Bajrangi alias Prem Prakash Singh, worked with the gang led by Mukhtar Ansari, first elected to the assembly in 1996 from Mau, for many years.
It was during the mid-2000s that he reportedly got involved in several cases of contract killing and extortion. He subsequently built a close rapport with some politicians, and contested the 2012 assembly elections as a joint candidate of the Apna Dal and the Peace Party of India, coming third.
His wife Seema tried her political luck in the 2017 UP assembly elections too, on a ticket of the Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party, but lost.
It was during his stint with the Ansari gang that Bajrangi reportedly came into conflict with another gangster, Brijesh Singh, who is said to have worked closely with Krishnanand Rai. The two groups often clashed but hostilities peaked after Rai defeated Ansari’s brother Afzal from Mohammadabad, which the latter had won in five elections, in the 2002 elections.
Investigators said Brijesh Singh could be a suspect in Bajrangi’s murder owing to “their personal animosity”.
Brother of BJP MLA Sushil Singh, Brijesh is currently in Varanasi jail. He is said to have worked for Dawood Ibrahim and was reportedly given the ‘contract’ to kill former MLA and gangster Arun Gawli, who allegedly murdered Dawood’s brother-in-law, his sister Hasina Parker’s husband. He was later acquitted in the case.
Sushil was reportedly given a Y-grade security cover after he claimed to be under threat from Bajrangi and Ansari.
I was a young man when I read Sunil Kothari’s column, perhaps in the Indian Express, about the “ criminalisation of Politics”. We have come a long way since then.