Jage and Kallu Lalla, had been put on display, their bodies festering over three days, covered with flies. They also showed me the tree from which they themselves had been hung, upside down, by the police and questioned about the whereabouts of Phoolan Devi, soon after the killings in Sirauli and Galauli. Such treatment, they said, was a common form of torture in the area, referred to locally as the Laxman Jhula, a euphemism which comes from the mythological god figure, Laxman, brother of Ram, who was made to swing from tree to tree by the Monkey God, Hanuman, in The Ramayana, one of the two central epics of the Hindu religion. They spoke of these events in a surprisingly matter–of–fact way. Much of what I have learnt about Baba Mustaqeem comes from them. They showed me the ruins under which Phoolan, Man Singh and Baladin had hidden themselves as if it were an historical spot, of tourist interest.

Despite their experience on the Laxman Jhula, when they had been swung from side to side, the blood rushing to their heads in a terrible way; despite the beating they had received under such conditions; despite all the questions thrown at them while they were being tortured in this manner; they had remained silent, preferring death to betrayal. When I said, “Phoolan Devi has good friends in people like you,” they replied: “We did it for Baba, in memory of Baba. We hardly knew Phoolan Devi.” The bandit chief commanded their loyalty even in death.

I asked them to tell me how Baba had been killed. What follows is based partly on the notes I took at the time and also information gathered from other press reports of the incident.

Mustaqeem had gone to his cousin’s village as planned. They had discussed the possibility of going to Bombay and immamuddin, who hero–worshipped his baghi relative, agreed to accompany him. Before leaving, Mustaqeem wanted to leave some money with his brother in the village of Dastampur, for the upkeep of his family while he was away.

Mustaqeem cut his hair, which he had worn much as Man Singh did, shaved his beard, reshaping his moustache and put on a white kurta–pajama. Placing his revolver in his cousin’s zipper bag and strapping all the money he had round his thigh, they set off by bus towards Dastampur.

“He looked so completely transformed,” said Salim, one of the two men telling the story, “that we all thought he’d be safe. Even face to face, the police would not have recognized him.”

The bus only went as far as Galuapur, in the Kanpur district of UP, from where his brother’s village was within walking distance.

That morning, police headquarters in Lucknow circulated a list of villages whose access roads were to be watched and instructed that anyone travelling these pathways was to be stopped and questioned. Sub–Inspector Hariram Pal and Constable Hari Singh were riding away from the village on bicycles when they saw two men walking towards them. The surrounding landscape was flat and barren for miles around, so escape would not have been possible. Mustaqeem and Immamuddin kept walking, realizing there was no other option, but when the men drew up alongside each other and the police asked where they wee going, the fear on Immamuddin’s face was apparent and made them instantly suspicious. Getting off their bicycles, they approached him, ignoring Mustaqeem and asked him further questions. Barely able to speak out o terror, he pointed towards the village and muttered something.

“What’s in the bag?” the police demanded to know, instructing him to open it.

“Clothes,” he said, his hands shaking as he fumbled with the zip.

At this point, Mustaqeem rushed forward in an attempt to grab the revolver from his cousin’s bag but the police had already seen it and, in the struggle that followed, the gun went off, attracting the attention of a group of young men, students from the village, who had been waling ahead. They turned back to see what was happening.

When they reached the spot, the struggle between the four men had become quite violent. Mustaqeem had the Sub–Inspector pinned down, having broken the rifle across his back: the constable and Immamuddin were still struggling. The young men rushed to assist the police, overpowering Mustaqeem and his cousin. Some ran to the village for reinforcements and rope, and eventually the two men were bound and made to walk into the village.

The police were still not aware of their identities. Once in the village, Mustaqeem told the police who he was, in an attempt to save his cousin. “He’s innocent. He’s not a dacoit, just a simple farmer. Let him go. You have me, what more do you want?” e said. As word spread, a large crowd gathered to see the legendary Baba Mustaqeem, his hair caked with blood and mud, trussed up so tightly he could barely move or stand straight.

Kalyan Mukherjee and Brij Raj Singh continue the account in their book about Malkhan Singh:

They [the police] dumped them into a small wooden carriage and Mustaqeem began to shout.

“Tese cops are bastards, they are going to kill me. They have taken away my money. I don’t want them to have it: if there are any poor here please take it for your daughters,” he kept saying.

The crowds watched him cry hoarse in the carriage. Once out of the sticky small town, the road stretched to the thana a thin strip of metalled road. Derapur had already got the news and more police were on the way. The thana had flashed the news to young Mohan Dad Menon, the S P of rural Kanpur.

But on the way the policemen changed their minds; they pocketed the money and then one of them began to eye the gold chain that hung around Mustaqeem’s neck. They stopped the carriage close to the Ratwa culvert and brought the duo down. As they dragged them into the fields, Mustaqeem kissed the talisman around his neck and prayed to Allah. Being a Sunni he was religious and scared of God. He had known that the road had shortened all too suddenly, just two weeks from the festival of Urs.

It was the fourth of March 1981.

The police later issued an official version, which said that two men were seen acting suspiciously. When asked to stop they had started running across the fields, opening fire on the policemen who then had to shoot back, killing them both. One had been Mustaqeem, “the dreaded Muslim dacoit leader”, while the other remained “unknown”.

Both Mustaqeem and Balwan Singh had died within a month of the Behmai massacre and, for Man Singh, it signalled the end of an era. He recalled the early days, when Mustaqeem had been a skilled wrestler whose fame was spreading fast through Kalpi. He wrestled for money and the audience gambled, by and large backing him, because he was their local star, the son of Pir Mohammad.

From professional fights, to street fights and gambling, he had drifted to Kanpur, lured by the mysteries of city life. There he had met Balwan Singh who was already a baghi and they became close friends. It was just a question of time before Mustaqeem was working alongside Balwan, making more money then he had ever seen in his life. He still lived at home and did part–time jobs for the gang, unknown to his family. Then, in 1979, he was with Balwan when he killed a police constable with whom he had some enmity. Mustaqeem took his friend’s side, automatically becoming an accomplice. He decided to abscond rather than risk trial for murder, although he had merely been present and had no hand in the actual killing. He had never trusted the police, most of whom were Hindu, and knew of many from his own community who had been subjected to their bullying chauvinism. Man Singh ha met the agile, dark, quick–witted Muslim when Mustaqeem fell in love with his sister, Shitala Devi, who lived in the village of Tirahi, not far from Balwan’s home. Now that both of them were dead, he told Phoolan Devi, it was only a question of time before fate caught up with him.

End of an Era

PHOOLAN DEVI AND MAN SINGH found themselves alone, constantly on the run, exhausted both mentally and physically with no end in sight. It was a hard time, Phoolan recalls:

“Four months we roamed the jungles, facing many difficulties, often without food. We lived on wild berries and occasionally fruit and vegetables stolen from people’s fields. Eventually we decided it was time to form a new gang. The first to join us was Maniram, followed by Kharag. Soon after this, the four of us looted a village. It was 4 p.m. We entered the house of a rich landlord and laid hands on stuff worth three to four lakhs. It seemed to be a lot of money but it soon went on procuring arms and ammunition. A month later, five more men joined us: Munna Singh Chauhan and Jaiveer Singh Chauhan, who had been with us before, Mehdi Hassan, Gopi and Jeevan. There were now nine of us in the gang. We organized minor dacoities and kidnappings and concentrated on building up our stock of weapons and bullets. During this time, Baba Mustaqeem’s brother, Muslim, also joined us. He had spent some time with Malkhan Singh’s gang after Baba’s death, but decided to look for us when Malkhan surrendered to the Madhya Pradesh government in the summer of 1982. He said Baba’s death still remained to be avenged.”

Muslim, who was in fact Mustaqeem’s first cousin, was to take his revenge less than two weeks after Malkhan Singh and his gang surrendered to the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh in the town of Bhind. His act triggered yet another political storm in Uttar Pradesh and Sunday, the current–affairs magazine that had reported the Behmai massacre at great length, ran another cover story headed: “V. P. Singh A CM Surrenders”. The bold print under the heading read:

After having staked his chief ministership on his ability to end the dacoit menace in UP, Mr Vishwanath Pratap Singh ultimately fell victim to his own wager. On 28 June, immediately after the massacre of 17 people in Kanpur and Mainpuri by dacoits, the chief minister handed in his resignation. Shubhabrata Bhattacharya visited Lucknow to report on the events that led Mr V. P. Singh to resign.”

Later, in the main article, the reporter says:

The Dastampur carnage is an appalling example of sloppy administration in Uttar Pradesh. The innocent villagers of Dastampur need not have been killed had the UP government kept its eyes and ears open. Dastampur is the village where villagers had helped the police to apprehend the dreaded dacoit, Baba Mustaqeem, on 4 March 1981, within three weeks of the Behmai carnage… Mustaqeem’s brother, Muslim, who was in Mustaqeem’s gang, joined Malkhan Singh’s gang soon afterwards and vowed to avenge the death of his brother.

When Malkhan Singh and his gang surrendered at Bhind to the Madhya Pradesh chief minister with much fanfare on 17 June 1982, Muslim was not among them. In fact, the Madhya Pradesh police officers knew only too well that Muslim and some other gang members had come half way out of the ravines with Malkhan Singh, changed their minds and returned to the ravines as Muslim felt that he had yet to avenge his brother’s death. Muslim’s open proclamation that he was staying out of the surrender drama because he wanted to punish the killers of his brother should have been taken more seriously by the police. But the open warning, given just ten days before the Dastampur carnage, was not heeded.

Police pickets had been posted at Dastampur for a year after the killing of Mustaqeem. In March this year, owing to some strange administrative logic, the UP government felt that Dastampur no more needed police protection and the police picket was withdrawn. After the open threat by Muslim on 17 June became known, the villagers of Dastampur approached Madan Singh, the station officer of the Derapur police station (under whose jurisdiction Dastampur falls). But the station officer was so complacent that he told the villagers not to cry wolf. ‘Kya baar baar aa jaate ho. Daaku kahan hain? Bhag jao nahin tho maar ke patang bana doonga!’ (Why do you come time and again? Where are

the dacoits? Go away or you will be beaten and made to fly like kites!) the station officer told the villagers, just a few days before the carnage. The villagers had approached the police for protection on hearing that Muslim was coming to avenge the death of Mustaqeem.

to be continued...