Lucknow: The BJP’s clean sweep in the 2022 Uttar Pradesh assembly elections came on the back of campaign rhetoric about “bulldozing” bahubalis (criminal strongmen) once the new government was formed. However, at least one bahubali of Purvanchal (eastern UP) seems to continue wielding political influence, even though the BJP denies allegations of offering patronage to him.
Gangster Brijesh Singh, who was once notorious as a “prized sharpshooter” of underworld don and 1993 Mumbai blast-accused Dawood Ibrahim, is currently in jail, but his wife Annapurna is now making a political mark in Varanasi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Lok Sabha constituency.
This week, in the biennial Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council elections, the BJP got 33 out of 36 seats. One of its few losses was in the Varanasi-Bhadohi-Chandauli MLC seat, which went to Independent Annapurna Singh.
But, there was some consolation: the gangster’s wife made it a point to lavish praise on the Yogi Adityanath government in UP.
Speaking to ThePrint, Annapurna Singh said she would absolutely support the BJP in the legislative council “agar aashirwad rahega (if the blessings continue)”.
She also said that she won the election fair and square: “There is no bahubal (muscle power), no dhanbal (money power), only janbal (people’s power). People keep making allegations and I can’t say anything about that.”
The BJP candidate Dr Sudama Patel, who won so few votes that he lost his deposit, had earlier this month alleged that BJP workers had gone “silent” and not campaigned for him because they feared they might get “chinhit (targeted)” by the “big bahubali” Brijesh Singh.
The Varanasi-Bhadohi-Chandauli MLC seat has been firmly occupied by Brijesh Singh and his family for the last 24 years. The gangster himself has been behind bars since 2008, but has remained politically active, amid allegations that the “Hindu don” and his family have the implicit support of the BJP.
Brijesh’s nephew is Saiyadraja MLA and BJP leader Sushil Singh, who has also faced allegations of criminal conduct.
When asked about speculation that the BJP government is implicitly backing gangsters like Brijesh, BJP spokesperson Rakesh Tripathi said there was no truth to such accusations since the party has fielded its own candidate against Annapurna Singh and the seat represented only a “small loss”.
However, the allegations precede this year’s MLC polls.
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‘Money, muscle power, BJP patronage’
In 2017, Brijesh Singh’s nephew, Saiyadraja MLA Sushil Singh, was reported to have said that his uncle was “effectively with the BJP” even though he had won the Varanasi-Chandauli-Bhadohi MLC as an Independent candidate in 2016. Back then, there had been plenty of comment about how the BJP — as also the BSP and the Congress — had refrained from fielding its own candidate in the MLC constituency.
Prior to this, Brijesh alias Arun Kumar Singh fought the 2012 assembly election from the Saiyadraja seat in Chandauli district on a ticket from the Pragatisheel Manav Samaj Party but lost the election by only 2,016 votes.
In the 2012 polls, Brijesh filed an affidavit in which he mentioned 39 cases lodged against him, out of which 24 came under Section 302 — murder — of the IPC. Then there is one case under the Gangster Act and two under the erstwhile Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act or TADA.
One of the high-profile cases in which Brijesh was named was the J.J. Hospital shootout of 1993, in which he was allegedly involved in the ‘revenge’ gunning down of Shailesh Haldankar, a member of the Arun Gawli gang who was believed to have killed Dawood’s brother-in-law Ismail Parkar.
The affidavit said that Brijesh was either exonerated or discharged in nine of the cases.
According to Amarnath Chaubey, who has fought a long legal battle against Brijesh Singh’s nephew Sushil Singh for allegedly “conspiring” in the 2015 murder of his father Ram Bihari Chaubey (who had close ties with Brijesh), the family has not turned over a new leaf.
On the back of a petition by Chaubey, the Supreme Court had in 2020 ordered the UP Police to reopen the 2015 murder case, referring to the probe as a “sham”, but he alleges that there is a lot more to investigate when it comes to the family and their “illegal activities” in eastern UP.
Chaubey said Sushil Singh has been granted an arms licence despite having 24 cases lodged against him (his poll affidavit, however, reportedly showed only one). He also alleged that Brijesh’s family is involved in illegal sand mining and in the “coal mafia”, although ThePrint could not verify this.
“Brijesh Singh was an accused in a mass murder of seven people, including four children, in 1986 in Sikraura. But I don’t expect any action against him during this regime. Yeh sarkaar ke damaad bane huye hain (they are treated like the in-laws of this government),” he said.
Brijesh was acquitted by a local court in the Sikraura murders — a case that dragged on for more than three decades — because of “contradictory statements” of witnesses. The complainant has approached the high court, Chaubey said.
Ramesh Dixit, a senior political analyst and retired head of the political science department at Lucknow University, told ThePrint that Brijesh Singh is one of the most prominent mafiosos of eastern UP and continues to enjoy political patronage because dons like him “provide support during elections” due to their money power.
“The presence of the coal mafia in eastern UP and places like Dhanbad and Bihar is not hidden. Yogiji’s Hindu Yuva Vahini was known to have close ties with local mafia,” Dixit, who has observed the state’s politics for 40 years, claimed.
‘Different rules for Ram bhakt dons’
Brijesh Singh continues to have clout in Uttar Pradesh due to his caste and community, alleged former Uttar Pradesh director general of police (DGP) Vikram Singh.
Both the DGP and Dixit claim that “Hindu dons” like Brijesh Singh offer a counter to the Muslim mafia, represented by the likes of Mukhtar Ansari — who also wields political heft and whose son Abbas Ansari is a member of the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party and MLA from Mau.
“Brijesh Singh is well known for his enmity with Mukhtar Ansari and is a face of the anti-Muslim mafia. If, in the government, there is no space for bahubalis, then there should be no space for pick-and-choose on the basis of caste, creed or religion,” the DGP said.
Dixit made a similar observation: “Mafiosos like Brijesh Singh and Mukhtar Ansari have been fighting over contracts of railways, roads, mines, and so on… The BJP has been successful in creating this narrative of Hindu mafia and Muslim mafia.”
According to him, the “Brahmin mafia” took hold of eastern UP politics in the 1980s, and the “Rajput mafia”, to which category Brijesh could be said to belong, followed thereafter.
“The dons of the Hindu community are Ram bhakt (devotees of Rama) and saviours of Hinduism, and those belonging to the other community are being targeted under the BJP,” Dixit alleged.
BJP spokesperson Rakesh Tripathi, however, told ThePrint that the party was not extending any political patronage to Brijesh Singh.
(Edited by Asavari Singh)
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