BULLETS & BALLOTS

IT'S ELECTION SEASON, AND EASTERN UP'S BAHUBALIS ARE AGAIN MUCH IN DEMAND

- Prashant Srivastava

ON March 6, Dhananjay Singh, mafia don and former MP of Jaunpur, was convicted by a local MP-MLA court in a case of kidnapping, extortion and criminal conspiracy from back in May 2020. Dhananjay, 48, and his aide Santosh Vikram Singh, were sentenced to seven years in a case relating to the abduction of a Jal Nigam project manager, Abhinav Singhal.

Purvanchal (eastern Uttar Pradesh), which includes places like Jaunpur, Azamgarh, Gorakhpur, Varanasi and Mau, is home to a number of notorious bahubalis, so no surprises that Dhananjay made the national headlines the next day. What did surprise was that this was the don's first conviction ever even though he has been 'active' for at least three decades, and at one time had 46 cases registered against him, including a few murders (folklore has it that he wrote his inter exams under police guard).

The conviction also came a day after Dhananjay had tweeted that he would be contesting the Lok Sabha election from Jaunpur, just hours after the BJP announced its candidate for the seat, Kripa Shankar Singh. The verdict itself was based on "evidence collected in the case", say police sourees, as the prime complainant, Singhal, had turned hostile. No wonder that his aggrieved supporters, who had collected in large numbers outside the court premises, were shouting slogans against the ruling dispensation in Lucknow and Delhi.

It's an open secret that Dhananjay, a three-time MLA and ex-MP with friends and influence across the political spectrum-who has had stints in the Bahujan Samaj Party, Nishad Party and the Janata Dal (United)-was hoping for a ticket from the ruling BJP. The Rajput don, a veteran of the Brahmin versus Thakur mafia wars in Purvanchal, had been out on bail till now despite the Yogi Adityanath regime's much-publicised crusade against crime. The righteous rage against gangsterism seen around the Atiq Ahmed killing last April had left him visibly unsinged.