Chambal Bandit for 30 years, Nirbhay retires to the Himalayas
VIJAY UPADHYAY
ETAWAH/BHIND. For 30 years, he ruled the Chambal with a steady hand but weakened by age and continually dogged by the police, Nirbhay Gujjar, the last remaining edifice of the old stock of bandits from India’s own “Wild-Wild West”, may have at last taken a peaceful retirement in the Himalayas, that he was vying for a long time.
Reports filtering in from the Chambal ravines of Etawah district of Uttar Pradesh and the adjoining Bhind of Madhya Pradesh indicate that this most feared bandit of Chambal has finally given up the ghost, following the rising waters of the river and the depleting strength of his gang due to regular encounters by the police of these two states.
According to the residents of the villages of Etawah, Bhind & Kalpi, Jaloun districts, Nirbhay has not been seen in these parts for quite some time and his regular contacts in the villages are no longer active. The gang has even gone untraceable on the electronic surveillance net of the police.
Sources in this region also claimed that after his gambit of surrender before the UP Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav failed, this veteran bandit has escaped across the border to Nepal in the guise of a Hindu sage, to live out the rest of his life away from the clutches of the police, giving the leadership of the gang to his right hand “Mangli Kevat”.
However, the Etawah Senior Superintendent of Police Daljit Chowdhary firmly refutes the claims of Nirbhay’s escape to Nepal. Talking to The Pioneer, Mr. Chowdhary said that the Nirbhay gang of 70 members was in its last throes, reduced to a paltry number of 10-12 bandits, all equipped with battered semi-automatics and just one assault rifle, making the gang vulnerable in the frequent shootouts with the police.
On the question of Nirbhay’s alleged escapade, Mr. Chowdhary, who has shot down 40 notorious bandits in just 11 months of his tenure including one from the Nirbhay gang in the UP Chief Minister’s hometown, said that the police was continually tracing the Nirbhay gang’s whereabouts and the gang’s location had been tracked moving through the Jalaun district of Uttar Pradesh and Bhind of Madhya Pradesh, adjoining Etawah, though he was still “Not Reachable” in the ravines, having slipped out of electronic surveillance.
He said that Nirbhay faced 200 criminal cases in UP and MP and has a price of Rs 2.5 lakh on his head; it would not be so easy for him to escape and it was his personal belief that Nirbhay would not live to surrender, but he shall be shot down and the time had arrived.
The police force of the adjoining Bhind district of Madhya Pradesh too harbours such sentiments for this bandit. According to Mr. R.A. Chowbey, Addl. Superintendent of Police, Bhind, resources had never been a constraint in the operations mounted by the Madhya Pradesh police against Nirbhay. Infact, in April last year, the then Superintendent of Police Mr. Shapoo had attacked the Nirbhay gang with just 10 men.
According to Mr. Chowbey, though the dacoit escaped narrowly in this encounter but his adopted son Shyam Jatav was wounded who lost nerve soon enough, surrendering before the Etawah police in July with Nirbhay’s “wife” Neelam, fearing he’ll be shot if he entered the Madhya Pradesh border again.
Since then, according to Mr. Chowbey, the Nirbhay gang has refrained from venturing into Bhind and in the past one year, there had been no activities of the Nirbhay gang in Madhya Pradesh. Still, he said, the Bhind police was cooperating with the police of Etawah and Jaloun districts of Uttar Pradesh and maintaining a noose over the Nirbhay gang, which, he believed, was hiding in the ravines of Jaloun districts but he had certainly not escaped to Nepal as the gang’s locations were continually being traced.
But if the sources in Chambal are to be believed, Nirbhay’s gang may still be active, but this “Osama” of the Chambal no longer lurks in the dark with his gang, waiting for a police bullet to end his twisted life of 30 years. Instead, he has taken the easy way out by retiring from the life of banditry, away from the grasp of the Indian law.
(UNITED NEWS ROOM)
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