Politically charged Uttar Pradesh has always been an attraction for both politicians and politics watchers. Being the most populous state that sends 80 MPs to Parliament, it is often said that the party which wins Uttar Pradesh decides the government in Delhi (at the Centre). But with power comes enmity, bloodshed, gang wars and of course money.
Amazon Prime’s made-in-India crime series, ‘Mirzapur’, may be a fictional depiction of the lawless boons of Uttar Pradesh, but reality becomes a mirror of fiction. If not just Mirzapur, UP still has many bustling lanes that often make headlines for the ‘killer’ combination of power and politics. Certain hinterlands of the state are known for political vendetta and pistols firing a storm at every opportunity.
People like ‘Kalen Bhaiya’, ‘Guddu Bhaiya’ and ‘Rati Shankar Shukla’ are called ‘Bahubali’ of Uttar Pradesh. News18 takes you through some of the so called dons of the state and their simple movies.
Mukhtar Ansari Vs Brijesh Singh
Mafia don and MLA Mukhtar Ansari is set to contest the Uttar Pradesh elections from Mau Sadar seat district on Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP) election symbol from jail.
Mukhtar had won the Mau Sadar assembly seat in 1996 as a member of the Bahujan Samaj Party. Since then, he has won the seat in all the consecutive elections and this will be the sixth time that he is contesting from this seat.
More interestingly, he has animosity with Brijesh Singh, who is jailed and is seeking re-election in the upcoming MLC (local body) elections in UP. Their story is somewhat similar to that of ‘Mirzapur’s’ Akhandanand ‘Kalen Bhaiya’ Tripathi and ‘Rati Shankar Shukla’.
Ansari and Brijesh were once close to each other, but their relationship soured in the 90s, when the government started commissioning development projects in the backward Purvanchal region. This led to the rise of organized gangs who competed with each other to grab the contracts for these projects.
Ansari, initially said to be a member of the Makhnu Singh gang, clashed with another gang led by Sahib Singh over a plot of land in Saidpur in the 1980s. Brijesh worked with Sahib at that time, and clashes between the two gangs resulted in violent incidents.
In 1995, Ansari entered politics through a student union at Banaras Hindu University, became an MLA in 1996 and began challenging Brijesh’s dominance. The two became the main rivals of the gang in the Purvanchal region.
To counter Ansari’s political influence, Singh supported the election campaign of BJP leader Krishnanand Rai. Rai defeated Afzal Ansari, brother of Mukhtar Ansari and five-time MLA, from Mohammadabad in the 2002 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections.
Mukhtar Ansari later claimed that Rai used his political office to award all contracts to Brijesh Singh’s gang, both of which conspired.
His name is also associated with the murderous attack on ASP Uday Shankar, the kidnapping of Rungta, the biggest coal trader of Purvanchal and the 2005 riots in Mau district. About 40 cases of heinous crime are registered against him in a single police station of Ghazipur district. ,
His party, the Quami Ekta Dal, was merged with the BSP before contesting the 2017 assembly election on its ticket.
The jailed don had come under fire when the Yogi Adityanath government cracked down on him and his associates.
According to police records of Varanasi zone, the economic empire of the Mukhtar gang in this region of eastern UP had lost close to Rs 400 crore when the last major confiscation of his son’s property took place in Ghazipur. 22 December 2021.
ateek Ahmed
Mafia don Atiq Ahmed will not contest UP elections this time, neither will his family. Jailed ‘Bahubali’ had contested elections for the first time in 1989 after contesting the elections himself. This is the second consecutive assembly election that no one from his family will be in the electoral fray.
However, the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) had earlier announced Atiq’s wife Shaista Praveen as its candidate from Allahabad West. The date was February 8.
Ahmed, now 62, is said to have committed his first murder in 1979. And there was no looking back for him in the world of crime. Ahmed, a five-time MLA and one-time MP, has 96 criminal cases against him. He has been booked in other cases including murder, kidnapping, illegal mining, extortion, intimidation and cheating.
Amar Mani and Aman Mani Tripathi
This father-son duo reminds us of ‘Kalen Bhaiya’ and his son ‘Munna Bhaiya’ from ‘Mirzapur’, both equally involved in crime. Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party has fielded Aman Mani Tripathi from Nautanwa in Maharajganj in the current Uttar Pradesh elections.
While Aman Mani is accused of the alleged murder of his wife Sara Singh in 2015, his parents Amar Mani and Madhumani are serving life sentences for the murder of poetess Madhumita Shukla in 2003.
Sara was found dead under mysterious circumstances in Firozabad district in 2015. Aman Mani had then claimed that his car met with an accident on his way to New Delhi. But in 2017 the CBI found him guilty of strangling his wife under a “pre-planned scheme”.
Raghuraj Pratap Singh alias Raja Bhaiya
Raja Bhaiya started his party Jansatta Dal two years ago and is contesting the UP elections from his stronghold Kunda. Raghuraj Pratap Singh has been winning from this seat since 1993 and his victory margin has been increasing with every election.
For the first time in nearly three decades, he is being challenged by his own colleague Gulshan Yadav, a Samajwadi Party candidate.
Raja Bhaiya is another ‘Bahubali’ who is similar to ‘Kalen Bhaiya’ of ‘Mirzapur’. Raghuraj Pratap Singh creates fear in the Badlands of Uttar Pradesh.
Rumor has it that the MLAs of Kunda feed their enemies to pet crocodiles. There isn’t much to substantiate this, though the Mayawati government, which harassed him for years, claimed to have found hundreds of skeletons from Beti Talab in the premises of his Kunda residence.
An incident from the village of Dilerganj in Pratapgarh district in 1995 narrates how Raghuraj Pratap Singh became the dreaded Raja Bhaiya, giving rise to sub-fictions such as ‘Kunda Ka Gunda’, ‘Robin Hood’, ‘Criminal Politician’, ‘Don’ and . Bahubali.
More than 20 houses were torched in the village, three Muslim girls were raped and brutally murdered and a Muslim boy was tied to a vehicle and dragged around the village. The fire tenders returned without doing their job and reported that there was no water available to extinguish the fire – the nearest water body was only 100 meters away from the burning houses.
Drawing attention to the increasing incidents of communal violence against Muslims in 1997, the then MP Mulayam Singh Yadav told the House, “We have never heard of an incident like Dilerganj in history. 8-8, 14- in Pratapgarh. 14, 16-16 year old girls were stripped, 31 houses of Muslims were burnt…this is the world’s first example…their last rites were held in Allahabad instead of Pratapgarh or Dilerganj and no investigation was done in this regard Has been.”
Hari Shankar Tiwari
Uttar Pradesh’s goon-turned-politician is now 85 years old and has not contested the UP elections since his defeat in 2012. But his son Vinay Shankar Tiwari is contesting from Chilupar assembly constituency in Gorakhpur on a Samajwadi Party ticket. Vinay has emerged as the richest candidate among those who filed nominations so far with movable assets of Rs 25.64 crore and immovable assets of Rs 41.87 crore.
It is said that crime in politics started with Hari Shankar Tiwari, who may have become old now but his dominance still remains. Once upon a time Tiwari’s huge mansion ‘Hata’ in Gorakhpur was the center of power in the city.
In 1985, when there was a wave of sympathy for the Congress after the death of Indira Gandhi, Hari Shankar was jailed under the Gangster Act. Despite this, he contested as an independent from jail, defeated the Congress candidate and won with a huge margin.
In the 1980s, he was charged with 26 different crimes. Tiwari was involved in crimes like murder, attempt to murder, kidnapping, extortion, and obstructing government activities. However, till date, Tiwari has not been convicted in any of the cases registered against him.
There was a time when it was said that whatever political party Hari Shankar joined, his fortunes changed. His influence spread from Ghazipur to Varanasi.
A political expert once said that after 1998, Hari Shankar had become the need of every party. Be it Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav or Kalyan Singh, Ram Prakash Gupta or Rajnath Singh or Mayawati, he worked as a minister in all these regimes. When Jagdambika Pal became the CM for a day, he was also a minister in his cabinet.
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