The heart of UP’s gangland

On my first day in Gorakhpur, the streets were quiet, the markets did a brisk business and life was normal. Exceptat the Gorakhpur Medical College, where the bomb explosion victims were nursing their wounds. The place was crawling with police and everyone on the campus was speaking of the possible assailants — a new gang led by Rakesh and Brahma Yadav. Again, it was caste rivalry.

My next stop, Paswan’s house, helped explain why Gorakhpur had such a bad reputation. There was a whole army of private gunmen all over the house and any visitor, especially a stranger, had to undergo a meticulous frisking. I was told that more than half of these gunmen did not have arms licenses. But the police posted there did not seem to find this unusual.

Even tighter security was witnessed at the residences of both Shahi and Tiwari and the latter’s cavalcade resembled that of a VVIP, with half a dozen vehicles preceding his car and even more trailing behind it, with gun barrels protruded from the windows. “Tiwariji is under a threat to his life from a rising ganglord, Sri Prakash Shukla,” said one of his `aides’. That was about twoyears ago, shortly after Shukla had gunned down V.P. Shahi in Lucknow.

Gorakhpur is a study in the criminalisation of politics. Most of the ganglords like R.P. Shahi, Tiwari, V.P. Shahi and O.P. Paswan had been elected to the state legislature from one political party or the other. Even fresh faces like Rakesh Yadav, then in jail for killing Paswan, had been fielded by the Bahujan Samaj Party. The city was represented in Parliament by Mahant Avaidyanath, the head priest of prestigious Gorakhnath Temple, which has lakhs of followers and thousands of acres of land in India and Nepal. The Mahant, a BJP man, was accused of patronising Paswan’s killers.

So when I went to Gorakhpur earlier this month to cover the floods I was looking for signs of terror unleashed by the ganglords. There were none. More than half the city was under water and the criminals turned politicians were busy reaping a political harvest out of their efforts to provide relief to flood victims. With Tiwari away in his constituency, 50 kmfrom Gorakhpur, his palatial hata (compound) was almost deserted. Other `leaders’ too were camping in Lucknow to escape the wrath of the affected people.

Right at the reception desk of the only decent hotel in the town, the staff gave me a long list of dishes which they could no longer serve. Both road and rail links to the city had been cut for over a week and occupancy in the hotel was very low. "The cook won’t do Chinese only for one guest.

Vegetables too are in short supply and so are milk products. Please keep that in mind while ordering," I was told.

Lest I forget, Gorakhpur is also the home-town of Subrato Roy, the maverick chairman of the Sahara Group of companies, who takes pride in telling you how he turned his initial capital of Rs 2,000 into Rs 6,000 crore, the present worth of his group.