Lucknow/Gonda: “Mere Jeevan mein mere haath se ek hatya hui hai. Log kuchh bhi kahen, maine ek hatya ki hai (I have committed one murder in my life. Whatever people may say, I have committed one murder),” BJP MP Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh told in an interview to news portal Lallantop in the run up to the 2022 Uttar Pradesh election.
The person the Kaiserganj MP referring to was Ranjit Singh who, he claimed, opened fire killing Ravinder Singh, the elder brother of late Samajwadi Party minister Vinod Singh alias Pandit Singh, in 1991.
Once childhood friends, Pandit Singh and Brij Bhushan were engaged in government contract work together, but later turned into business and political rivals. Singh died of Covid complications in 2021.
Despite the bold declaration, the BJP MP was tried in court but never convicted of murder.
A six-time MP, Brij Bhushan once faced as many as 38 cases against him under various charges including theft, rioting, murder, criminal intimidation, attempt to murder, kidnapping etc., all lodged between 1974 and 2007. He was also booked in a case under the UP Goondas Act and three more under the stringent Gangsters and Anti-Social Activities (Prevention) Act in that period, according to police records.
If his aides are to be believed, the BJP strongman was acquitted in all these cases. Sanjeev Singh, a representative of the Kaiserganj MP, told ThePrint that Brij Bhushan was acquitted in all 38 cases, while an appeal against acquittal from the trial court in one of the cases is pending in the Allahabad High Court.
Now, the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) chief stands accused of sexual harassment by several women wrestlers. A poster carrying a list of criminal cases lodged against Brij Bhushan hangs at the protest site in Delhi’s Jantar Mantar, where top wrestlers including Olympics medalists Sakshi Malik and Bajrang Punia are demanding his arrest. Sources in the Gonda police confirmed the list of cases as genuine.
“The 38 cases you are mentioning have finished after acquittal in each of them. Two of the four cases mentioned in the affidavit in 2019 have also ended. Two others are related to (model code of conduct violations) elections,” Brij Bhushan’s aide told ThePrint.
However, in the records of Nawabganj police station in Gonda — considered Brij Bhushan’s ‘fiefdom’ — he continues to be a history-sheeter. Nawabganj Station House Officer (SHO) Karunakar Pandey confirmed this to ThePrint, adding that the history-sheet was opened in the 1980s. The police station has a record of all the cases lodged — in Nawabganj, Gonda, Ayodhya and Delhi — against the BJP MP.
“He remains a history-sheeter, but we are no longer subjecting him to scrutiny (like other criminals). At our level, we have the power to open the history-sheet of a criminal, but only the court or an officer of the rank of superintendent of police or above, has the power to close it,” Pandey said.
“He has not been under police scrutiny ever since he became an MP. Our police force is a part of his security,” the SHO added.
ThePrint reached Brij Bhushan via calls and messages, but did not get a response. ThePrint also visited his Gonda residence on 2 May, but his aides said he would not give an interview.
According to Suraj Singh, the son of Ravinder Singh, “witnesses turning hostile” was the reason for his acquittal in several cases.
“He has been winning elections due to good luck and the influence that he enjoys. He not only has money but also the manpower, which was evident in the election that his son fought against me,” Suraj told ThePrint, referring to last year’s assembly polls in which he fought against Brij Bhushan’s son Prateek Bhushan Singh in Gonda.
Recounting the events in the run-up to the election, Suraj said, “Hundreds of wrestlers from across the country had arrived. He owns over 30 educational institutions, which are the source of his musclepower.”
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Arms Act, Babri & attempt to murder
Among the cases previously lodged against Brij Bhushan is one under the Arms Act, filed at Gonda’s Nawabganj police station in 1993, and an attempt to murder case lodged the same year where he was accused of opening fire at his fierce rival Vinod Singh alias Pandit Singh, a former Samajwadi Party minister and three-time legislator from Gonda.
In the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, Brij Bhushan disclosed in his affidavit that he had two cases lodged against him. One of them was the Babri Masjid demolition FIR registered in 1992 against karsevaks under IPC Sections 147 (rioting), 153 (wantonly giving provocation with intent to cause riot), 153a (promoting enmity), 332 (voluntarily causing hurt to deter public servant from his duty), 338 (causing grievous hurt by act endangering life or personal safety of others), 295 (injuring or defiling place of worship), 297 (trespassing on burial places, etc), 395 (dacoity) and 397 (robbery or dacoity with attempt to cause death or grievous hurt).
The second was the case of firing at Pandit Singh, for which an attempt to murder case was slapped on him.
Between the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections, there were two more cases lodged against Brij Bhushan. The first one was during the 2014 polls under IPC Sections 188 (disobedience to order duly promulgated by public servant) and 171H (illegal payments in connection with an election) when Brij Bhushan was accused of distributing money among students and the public at Ayodhya’s Asharfi Bhawan crossing. His supporters were accused of raising slogans, flashing weapons and throwing liquor bottles on the streets.
The same year, another case was lodged against Brij Bhushan for violation of the model code of conduct under IPC Section 188 (illegal payments in connection with an election) and 341 (wrongful restraint), according to the 2019 poll affidavit.
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‘The one murder’
In the Lallantop interview, Brij Bhushan says he killed Ranjit Singh, who along with others had allegedly opened fire during a panchayat meeting in 1991.
Narrating the sequence of the events in the interview, he says that Ravinder Singh, who was his partner in one of his businesses, was at the panchayat, despite his disapproval.
Brij Bhushan goes on to say that, while he was interacting with a person at the panchayat, gunshots were fired in the air by Ranjit Singh, one of which hit Ravinder Singh, killing him on the spot. It is after this, Brij Bhushan says in the interview, that he shot Ranjit Singh and subsequently there was heavy cross-firing from both ends. This, he says, was the one murder he has committed in his life.
But, Ravinder Singh’s son Suraj, quoted earlier, recounted a different sequence of events that unfolded on the day of the incident.
“My mother was pregnant with me when my father was killed. But from what I have heard from my relatives and friends, Kinker Singh had fired in the air first from the opposite side. Two persons were killed from both sides, including my father,” he told ThePrint.
“Ranjit Singh was killed in crossfire from the group accompanying my father,” Suraj added, refusing to acknowledge that Brij Bhushan really killed his father’s killer.
In 1993, an incident of firing at Pandit Singh — in which Brij Bhushan was one of the accused according to police records — changed the equation between the two families forever.
A group of assailants had reportedly sprayed bullets at Pandit Singh while he was at his Ballipur residence. Pandit Singh suffered several gunshots and was airlifted by the Mulayam Singh government to a Lucknow hospital, leading to a miraculous escape from death.
But the case remained pending for 30 years. Insiders hinted at an understanding between the families of Pandit Singh and Brij Bhushan.
“After Brij Bhushan joined the Samajwadi Party in 2008, late former CM Mulayam Singh brokered a compromise between the two families. Even as the trial continued, no member of Pandit Singh’s family could testify,” an SP leader from Gonda told ThePrint.
“Pandit Singh died of Covid in May 2021, but till then, he himself had not testified in the case,” the leader added.
Speaking to ThePrint, Suraj asserted that after Pandit’s death, his other uncle Narendra Singh testified in court against Brij Bhushan in September 2021, stating that it was he who fired at Pandit Singh.
Narendra had also claimed that he faced a threat to life from Brij Bhushan in the court, he added. In December 2022, however, Brij Bhushan and two others were acquitted in the case. In several interviews, Brij Bhushan has claimed that he was framed due to political vendetta.
Meanwhile, Suraj told ThePrint that they moved the Allahabad High Court contesting the acquittal verdict of the MP/MLA court of Gonda and that they hope to get justice from the high court.
The Ghanshyam Shukla case
The most sensational case in which Brij Bhushan was accused of having a role, but remained inconclusive, was the suspicious death of former BJP MLA Ghanshyam Shukla in April 2004. According to news reports, former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had called Brij Bhushan and asserted, “Marva diya (you got him killed).”
Shukla had replaced Brij Bhushan as the BJP’s candidate in 2004.
While Shukla’s wife Nandita Shukla alleged conspiracy and termed the death a murder, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) filed a final report — a precursor to the closure report in the case.
Nandita, a former SP MLA, told ThePrint that the case remained inconclusive. “We got a notice from the court a few years back and the result was zero (the case remains inconclusive),” she said, refusing to talk further.
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‘Land mafia link’
In January this year, Brij Bhushan’s representative Sanjeev Singh and his nephew Sumit Bhushan landed in a controversy after which an FIR was lodged at Gonda’s Kotwali police station against Sumit for his alleged role in forcibly taking possession of government land.
On 31 January, the Joint Advocate Federation of Devipatan Mandal, led by its president, lawyer Ravi Prakash Pandey, protested against Brij Bhushan and his aides. The Mandal also issued a memorandum addressed to the prime minister, the UP chief minister, the Union home minister and the Lok Sabha chairman, alleging that the land mafia was freely working under the patronage of Brij Bhushan’s representative Sanjeev Singh.
“Leader of land mafia Khaleel Tyrewala, who once used to repair vehicles, has been taking forced possession of Nazul, Waqf land, ponds and drains and has been resorting to the sale of plots here. He has the patronage of the Kaiserganj MP’s representative Sanjeev Singh,” reads the memorandum, seen by ThePrint.
Days later, on 3 February, the administration’s bulldozers brought down 8-ft-high walls erected on nazul land, at a distance of 100 m from the Gonda district magistrate’s office.
Next day, an FIR was lodged by the nazul land inspector against Brij Bhushan’s nephew Sumit Bhushan and seven others, which stated that the “land was registered by some persons against the name of Dakshaini Enterprises headed by Sumit Bhushan ‘without rightful authority’ and the same was ‘against law’”.
The FIR, seen by ThePrint, was lodged in Kotwali police station under IPC sections for impersonation, cheating, forgery, etc.
“The government had set up a special investigative team to probe the fraudulent land deals and plotting that has happened in Gonda over the past several years in connivance with district lawyers. That inquiry is still ongoing,” lawyer Pandey said.
Speaking to ThePrint, a senior police officer who has served in Gonda informed that four lawyers are currently in jail in this connection while one is absconding. “The investigation continues to be pending with the state SIT,” the officer added.
Asked about the allegations against Sanjeev Singh and Sumit Bhushan, Brij Bhushan’s aide Subhash Singh said the MP has not been named in any FIR related to the duo.
When ThePrint contacted Sanjeev Singh, for a comment on his alleged links with the land mafia, he said the case lodged related to nazul land is pending in the trial court.
“The land deal has been made after payment of stamp duty and without any coercion on sellers. Some of the accused have got anticipatory bail and others have got stay on arrest,” he said, claiming that there has been no cheating.
The government, however, has put a board on the land stating that the plot is nazul land and belongs to the government and taking possession of it is a criminal offence.
(Edited by Richa Mishra)
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