Bundelkhand, Still Bandit Country

Thriving on Fear and Local Support, and Buoyed by Fresh Recruits in Their Ranks, Dacoit Gangs Are Again Rearing Their Head in This Vast Terrain Overlapping Two States

- Ashish Misra

The glistening road from the police station in Bharat Koop, through Chitrakoot in Bundelkhand, Uttar Pradesh, dulls quickly on the zigzag path to Kalinjar in Madhya Pradesh. At the foot of the Vindhyas, it disappears completely. Several kilometres in, through the hilly, rain-fed forests, is the Kolhua jungle. Located in the triangle of Chitrakoot, Bharat Koop and Satna districts across both UP and MP, the jungle has been a safe haven for dacoits and bandits for three decades.

On June 30, the police found the bodies of three men burnt beyond recognition. Acting on a tip, the UP police believe the men were abducted from Satna in MP by the Lalit Patel gang. Patel is from Nayagaon in MP, and his alleged victims were men from nearby villages and thought to be informers. Not, of course, for the police, which has little control over or access to the gangs, but for Patel’s rivals. The police are arranging for DNA tests to identify the bodies. Patel, they say, operates mostly in MP, but is thought to relocate across the border to UP to evade local police attention. UP police say that while Patel does not have a rap sheet in the state— though police in the area did have a brief encounter with him in the week before the bodies were discovered—a huge manhunt is underway. Information is proving difficult to obtain.