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Dujana killing puts focus on UP’s hitmen
Born in 1980, Dujana started his life in crime in 2002 but the daring murders in Ghaziabad in 2011 catapulted him into the top echelons of the strongmen.
It was a cold November night. At a wedding ceremony in Ghaziabad, guests ambled about, light woollens obscuring their finery. A throng of young men surrounded the groom, local gangster Sundar Bhati.
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The rituals were about to start when a tall, dusky man in his 20s walked in, a gang of men with AK-47s trailing him. A shower of bullets rained on the groom’s party, leaving three people dead. The perpetrator — Anil Dujana — had ordered and executed a hit on his former ringleader, Bhati, at the behest of his new boss, Randip Bhati.
Born in 1980, Dujana started his life in crime in 2002 but the daring murders in Ghaziabad in 2011 catapulted him into the top echelons of the strongmen whose sway shaped almost every aspect of life in western UP. Shortly afterwards, he started his own gang, fuelling the lore around his sharp-shooting skills that led many to call him the Chota Shakeel of Meerut, a reference to the dreaded don from Mumbai who remains one of India’s most wanted men. The sensational killing of a block chairman in 2013 in Muzaffarnagar bolstered his notoriety.
Between 2011 and 2023, Dujana raked up 62 criminal cases, 18 of them murders. Often working as a shooter for hire, he trained around 100 other men, say police. Even his arrest in 2012 did little to tame his criminal enterprise, which he ran from behind bars.
His life of crime came to an abrupt halt on Thursday as the special task force of UP Police controversially gunned him down in an encounter near Meerut. Though questions abound about the tactics of the UP Police to neutralise criminals rather than bringing them to justice, Dujana’s death put the spotlight on the class of hitmen and sharpshooters who were nurtured by gang lords and strongmen with political links.
In the impoverished hinterland of eastern and western UP, where industries are sparse, jobs are scarce and law enforcement erratic, these shooters often helped enforce a virtual writ and created parallel structures of administration and law. These hitmen are classified into three categories, say senior UP Police officials. The first are the expendables, deployed for a specific job and then disposed of to make the crime trail cold. The second are the ones who are used and then made to surrender if police pressure mounts. The third are hitmen, who are only used sparingly and for high-risk jobs. Dujana was one among a list of 10 most-notorious hitmen who terrorised UP. HT spoke to 14 retired and serving police officers with vast operational experience to profile the other nine.
“Underworld has never been short on hitmen, one goes, 10 replace the one,” said Vijay Shankar Singh, retired inspector general of police, who worked against the eastern UP mafia. “There are variety of reasons but biggest is mafias using the impressionable minds to work for them out of glamour and gradually turn into a pro criminal.”
Shri Prakash Shukla
The Gorakhpur man was amongst the most notorious names in UP in the late 90s, and was almost single handedly responsible for the creation of the special task force (STF) in 1998. Shukla executed some high-profile murders using AK series rifles and semi-automatic pistols, and police said he may have even considered taking on a ₹6 crore contract to kill then chief minister Kalyan Singh. On September 22, 1998, Shukla was killed in an encounter with the UP STF.
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Guddu Singh
Operating in almost the same timeframe as Shri Prakash Shukla, Guddu Singh also hailed from Gorakhpur. But unlike the former, he operated independently with a motley group of loyalists in eastern UP. In 2002, he targeted politician Syed Shahabuddin in Bihar, but missed. He had raked up at least 20 counts of murder when he was shot dead by Shahabuddin’s gunmen in the Barh court room in Bihar in 2004.
Sanjiv Maheshwari ‘Jeeva’
In jail since 2017, this diminutive man from western UP was involved in two of UP’s most-sensational political murders in the last 25 years — the 1997 killing of BJP minister Brahmdutt Dwivedi in Farrukhabad and the murder of BJP lawmaker Krishna Nand Rai in Mau in 2005. In his work for gangsters Mukhtar Ansari and Munna Bajrangi, he was involved in shootouts across UP, Bihar and West Bengal. Anil Pintoo, his main hitman, was arrested in Shamli in 2022 with a gun and 1,300 live cartridges following an attack on the dean of agriculture at Meerut University, Rajveer Singh. The hit was ordered by Maheshwari. Pintoo is currently in Mainpuri jail.
Kripa Chowdhary
A native of eastern UP, Chowdhary worked as a hitman for gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari and was among the first criminals in UP to use semi-automatic weapons in murders, say police. In 1998, he allegedly gunned down three people publicly in Mirzapur with an AK-47. Then he exchanged fire with the police team on the spot, killed an inspector and injured two other constables. In 2006, Chowdhary was shot dead by the UP STF in Mumbai, where he was in hiding.
Indra Dev Singh
Singh, a resident of Ghazipur, rose in the world of crime taking advantage of the fractious rivalry between Mukhtar Ansari and gangster-politician Brajesh Singh. His reign of terror in eastern UP lasted for years but came to an abrupt end in 2013, when he murdered Satish Singh, a cousin of Brajesh Singh, and Raju Khalnayak and his wife who handled Brajesh Singh’s affairs. Police say that since then, he has gone underground and maintains a low profile, eschewing the use of even a mobile phone.
Kanhaiya Vishwakarma ‘Girdhari’
A dreaded hitman of a gangster-politician in UP, Vishwakarma was ambidextrous and can fire with equal precision using either hand. Months before he was gunned down in February 2021 in Lucknow, he killed block pramukh Ajit Singh in public in Lucknow.
Rashid Kalia
This hitman from central UP doesn’t have a mugshot on file in the police records, but authorities say during their investigations his footprint has been found in at least 35 murders. In 2020, Kalia killed gangster-politician Pintu Sengar in Kanpur and abducted another person in Jhansi whom he murdered later, after taking ransom. Police say Kalia stays away from mobile phones, works alone, and lives like a common man. His last location was traced to Kanpur’s Gadiyana in 2020.
Balraj Bhati
The shooter of the Sundar Bhati gang in western UP was specifically used by gangs to shoot down witnesses in Haryana, Bulandshahr and Meerut, often in public places. He was killed by the UP STF in 2019, but not before his name cropped up in at least 20 murder cases in western UP.
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Munir
Munir, who only goes by one name, shot to infamy when he killed the deputy superintendent of police of the National Investigation Agency, Tanzeel Ahmed Khan, in 2017 by pumping 57 bullets into his body. After his arrest in 2016, police connected him to another 31 murders and 20 robberies. In 2021, Munir died of illness in jail.
