Lucknow: In the early hours of 25 July, a team of 15 Uttar Pradesh police officers, led by an additional director general (ADG) and a deputy inspector general (DIG), raided an area under the jurisdiction of the most “malaaidar” (profitable) police station in Uttar Pradesh’s Ballia district. During the operation, they apprehended three policemen, including a station in-charge, and agents involved in a longstanding extortion racket.
Dressed in plain clothes and travelling in five unmarked vehicles, the team ensured that not a single policeman serving in Ballia district had any inkling of the operation.
“The beacons and the UP police symbols on the vehicles were removed. It was decided that no one would be in uniform and no arms would be carried to ensure that no one could get a whiff that it was a police team,” a source in UP police, who was aware of the raid, told ThePrint.
As the teams approached the Bharauli T-point, they observed a group of policemen operating without uniforms and their dalaals (a term used in police circles for intermediaries who help collect illegal bribes), actively collecting bribes from truckers. The issue of the extortion racket at Bharauli border had been a topic of discussion in the UP legislative assembly earlier this year.
Having entered Bihar’s Buxar, the team, led by ADG (Varanasi zone) Piyush Mordia and DIG (Azamgarh range) Vaibhav Krishna took a U-turn and started travelling back towards UP, where they saw a long traffic jam caused by vehicles, including trucks, lined up on the Buxar-Ballia carriageway.
“The moment we entered UP, a group of policemen in plain clothes, along with their agents, could be seen halting the trucks one by one and collecting Rs 500 per trucker for allowing them entry into UP,” the source added.
Stopping a truck moving along that route, the ADG and the DIG went inside it.
“The truck driver was very scared, but he was taken into confidence by the senior officers. Along the route, he explained how the truckers are stopped one by one, and if someone tries to bypass the cops, they stop the truck, beat the trucker, and issue a challan of around Rs 40,000 to Rs 50,000. Most truckers hide the truck number to evade revengeful cops in future in case they manage to speed away and pass through the area without paying extortion money,” the source said.
“We nabbed around 16 to 18 of them (police and their dalaals) for extorting money,” the source said.
As the team detained a group of agents and Haridayal Singh, constable from Narahi police station, three other cops from the same station — head constable Vishnu Yadav and constables Deepak Mishra and Balram Singh — managed to flee from the spot.
During interrogation, Haridayal revealed that about 4 km from the T-point, extortion is also a common issue at the Korantadih police outpost. He said that local policemen at this outpost frequently extort money from truckers traveling towards Ghazipur.
The team then visited the Korantadih police outpost and found truckers being stopped and cops extorting money from them.
Satish Chandra Gupta, a constable from Korantadih police chowki, was arrested while one Ashok Maurya escaped from the spot, a statement released by UP Police said.
Ashok was the personal worker of sub-inspector Pannelal, Narahi police station in-charge, the statement added.
Pannelal was arrested by Ballia Police’s special operations group (SOG) Sunday afternoon, DIG Krishna confirmed.
18 policemen, one constable driver suspended
Along with Pannelal and Rajesh Kumar Prabhakar, chowki in-charge of Korantadih police post, three sub-inspectors, three head constables, 10 constables, and one constable driver were suspended after the crackdown on 25 July.
“The homes of the suspended officers have been sealed, and a case has been registered against all involved,” a statement released by the UP government said.
According to the police statement, of the personnel suspended, eight are from Korantadih — chowki incharge Prabhakar, two head constables named Chandrajit Yadav and Aurangzeb Khan, and five constables named Parvind Yadav, Satish Chandra Gupta, Pankaj Kumar Yadav, Gyanchandra and Dharamveer Patel.
In Narahi police station, sub-inspector night officer U.N. Mangala Prasad, a head constable Vishnu Yadav, five constables named Haridayal Singh, Deepak Mishra, Balram Singh, Udayveer and Prashant Singh, and one constable driver Om Prakash, have been suspended.
A case has been registered against the above, along with 16 agents, under sections 111 (organised crime), 309 (4) (robbery committed on highway between sunset and sunrise), 310 (2) (dacoity), 61 (2) (criminal conspiracy), and 318 (cheating) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), and sections 7 and 13 of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, which are related to criminal misconduct by public servants.
According to the statement released by UP police, the 16 private persons used as agents by the policemen were Ravishankar Yadav, Vivek Sharma, Jitesh Chaudhary, Virendra Rai, Sonu Singh, Ajay Kumar Pandey, Virendra Singh Yadav, Arvind Yadav, Umashankar Chaudhary, Jawahir Yadav, Dharmendra Yadav, Vikas Rai, Harendra Yadav, Salaam Ansari, Anand Kumar Thakur and Dileep Kumar Yadav.
Virendra Rai, Virendra Singh Yadav and Vikas Rai are residents of Bihar’s Buxar and Kaimur, respectively, while the rest belong to UP’s Ballia.
At least 1,000 truckers extorted & Rs 5 lakh collected per day
The statement revealed that the agents would coordinate with truckers the entry timings of their trucks into the Narahi area. Once the trucks entered Ballia, they collected Rs 500 from each trucker. It added that approximately 1,000 trucks would enter Ballia in a single night, allowing the organised gang to make an estimated illegal collection of Rs 5 lakh nightly. This money was then distributed among the local policemen and agents involved.
The ADG and DIG have reportedly recovered two diaries from the Narahi police station, which contain detailed entries of daily collections and how the money was distributed.
In a video statement Thursday, the DIG said that the police had been receiving reports of illegal extortion occurring near the Bharauli T-point.
Asked what was being transported in those trucks, he said that the vehicles were carrying different items, including sand, soil and coal.
Phephna MLA Sangram Singh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party (SP), who raised the issue in the UP assembly during the interim budget session in February this year, termed the extortion taking place in Bharauli the “tip of the iceberg”.
“The racket had been taking place there for a long time. I had raised this issue in the assembly six months ago, and the government had acted on it only in July. Pannelal had been serving as Narahi police station’s sub-inspector since August 2022. If Rs 5 lakh was being collected every day, it means that crores of money were being extorted illegally. Where was it going? It cannot go just to a few policemen,” Yadav told ThePrint.
In the assembly, Yadav had alleged that Pannelal conducted wine smuggling and illegal sand mining.
“He imposes police tax (extortion money) on the sand arriving from Bihar using which the poor construct their houses. He says that nobody can remove him from the post because he pays money from bottom to top. Whom does he pay? Only he himself, the inspector, and the policemen in the higher-ups can tell,” Yadav had said in the assembly.
He told ThePrint that not only was the extortion racket akin to looting the public, but also resulted in traffic jams for long hours on the bridge.
“Several patients who remained stuck in traffic jams for long hours along the bridge lost their lives. Once, a groom, whose baraat was moving towards UP, remained stuck for hours on the bridge, and could reach only in the nick of time for his wedding,” Yadav told ThePrint.
Yadav said that he believed that Pannelal got the post of station in-charge because he had connections with higher-ups.
While it is inspectors who are usually posted as in-charges of police stations, a sub-inspector rank officer was made in-charge of Narahi, a significant police station in Ballia.
Former UP director general of police (DGP) Sulkhan Singh told ThePrint that in 2013, during the tenure of Akhilesh Yadav as CM, an order was issued that only an inspector rank police officer could become the station house officer (SHO) of a police station but later the rule was relaxed and sub-inspectors also started being posted as in-charges of police stations.
Relaxing the 2013 order, the then additional chief secretary (home) of UP Awanish Awasthi issued an order in 2021 that if capable inspectors were not available, sub-inspectors could also be posted as in-charges of police stations in at most 50 percent of the police stations.
Citing the example of the infamous Bikru case, Sulkhan said that during his tenure as DGP, he had recommended that the government initiate a probe into how certain police officers managed to get posted in Kanpur repeatedly. “There are police officers who tend to get postings in the same district or range or zone, and form a group which expands into a nexus between them and the local mafia. Usually, senior police officers and bureaucrats are involved in such cases.”
On 3 July, 2020, a police team went to Kanpur’s Bikru village to arrest gangster Vikas Dubey in a case of attempted murder, but was ambushed. Eight police personnel, including deputy superintendent of police (DSP) Devendra Mishra, were killed in the shootout that lasted till early morning the next day.
Sulkhan also said that some police stations located at the interstate borders had become gold mines for corrupt police officers. “These include the Saiyadraja and Alinagar police stations in Chandauli district, and Naribari police station in Prayagraj. Similarly, there are certain police stations in Bundelkhand where illegal sand mining is rampant.”
He added that there are many police stations on the borders where smuggling of cows and other animals is rampant via the Barabanki and Jaunpur routes, and animals are transported to West Bengal from there.
Illegal liquor trade and sand mining continue along UP-Bihar border
The UP-Bihar border near Ballia district has been known for illegal transportation of sand, soil, wine and animals between the two states, but there had hardly been any crackdown on the sand and liquor mafia prevailing in the area, until now.
Yadav said that while the police have taken major action by arresting corrupt cops and the private agents working for them, illegal liquor business and sand mining continue.
“Liquor is banned in Bihar but it is being transported from Ballia’s Bairia to Bihar every day. Further, cow smuggling and illegal sand mining are rampant on the border. We demand a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into the case. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) should step in and gauge the money involved,” he said.
Near the Manjhi area, the Bihar Police recovered a huge cache of liquor smuggled into Bihar from UP’s Bairia.
Asked how smuggling occurred despite cameras being placed, the DIG said that allegations of liquor smuggling will be investigated.
Rackets busted in UP in the past
The Veer Kunwar Singh Setu, a bridge which links UP with Bihar via Ballia, was closed in May 2014, after which it remained shut for a long time. As a result, extortion stopped for the time being. However, after the bridge was open to the public again, extortion resumed.
In 2019, an extortion racket similar to the one in Ballia was busted at another bridge – the Janeshwar Mishra Setu, which is located 6 km from the Ballia district headquarters in the Dubhar police station area. Constructed at the Shivrampur Ghat over the Ganga, the bridge links several parts of Ballia with Bihar’s Buxar.
After complaints about the extortion racket reached the government, former minister of state Anand Swarup Shukla, along with the police, raided the area.
“An extortion racket was taking place on the Janeshwar Mishra Setu when the bridge was made operational. Truckers were being extorted by local policemen, and we were informed that the entire police station was involved in the racket. Along with my security officers, I raided the area at around 1 am one night, and found police personnel extorting truckers. They had all lined up on the bridge. Their faces were covered, and they were holding sticks in their hands,” Shukla told ThePrint.
He said that two police constables, identified as Raju Bhardwaj and Mulayam Yadav, were caught in the raid, and the then Ballia superintendent of police (SP) and assistant superintendent of police (ASP) were summoned to the spot.
“The station officer and constables of the Dubhar police station were suspended, while the other cops posted there were sent to police lines,” he added.
Echoing Sulkhan’s statement, Shukla, too, said that such kind of activity is difficult without collusion with senior police officers of a district.
“The role of an SP is very important in such cases. If a corrupt police officer gets posted, the junior cops too start indulging in corruption,” Shukla said.
(Edited by Radifah Kabir)
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