Unnao: Where feudalism, crime and a compromised state machinery meet

Experts and activists say the socio-political fabric in Unnao ensconce key conditions that let crime fester and make law enforcement tough

Kaushal Singh, a resident of Hasangunj hamlet in central Uttar Pradesh’s Unnao district, was four when his father was murdered. His father was walking down the main avenue, or Bada Chauraha, in Unnao to meet his lawyer near the district court when he was shot twice in the head. His killer, whom police later said was a henchman acting on behalf of a local don, put his revolver back and walked away – no one in the crowded street attempted to stop him. It was 1981.

Police personnel investigate the site where bodies of two minor Dalit girls and another in critical condition were found in a field in February in Unnao, Uttar Pradesh. (PTI)

Singh grew up hearing up stories about his father from his mother, who longed for revenge. She told him that his father was hindering the rise of an upper-caste don who held sway over local politics and therefore was gunned down. The shooter was caught a few months later and sentenced to life in jail.

In 2003, the shooter was released from jail on parole. Days later, while standing outside the Unnao district court, he was killed by two gunshots. The shooter was Kaushal Singh.

“Kaushal killed him at the very spot his father was killed, at the same time. After shooting him twice in the head, Kaushal shouted ‘mera badla pura hua’ (I have taken my revenge), boarded a tempo and left,” said Asad Maqbool, a sub inspector at Unnao police station who arrested Singh later.

Kaushal was sentenced to jail but expressed no regret. “I spoke to him after his arrest, his life mission was to kill that man to get his family to reclaim the position it deserved, “ Maqbool said.

Such stories of revenge, feudalism, crime and enmity abound in the cramped bylanes, chowks and crossroads of Unnao.

Sandwiched between Lucknow and Kanpur and on the banks of the Ganga, Unnao traces its history back almost 900 years, through the reigns of the Mughals to the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny, when the modern administrative district was laid out.

Today, it lies at the heart of what is called the badlands of Uttar Pradesh, where local strongmen have fiefdoms shaped by caste and crime and the heft of a political leader is measured by the length of his cavalcade, his crime record, and his ability to bend the law. As a result, political influence, law enforcement and feudal power often have blurred boundaries, resulting in uneven policing, rampant crime against women and caste-based persecution.

The region grabbed national headlines in 2017 after former Bharatiya Janata Party legislator Kuldeep Singh Sengar raped a minor girl and then dodged the law for months, banking on his caste and feudal networks. In 2018, a minor Dalit girl said she was gang-raped by men who also videographed the crime and another Dalit girl was burnt alive. In 2019, a 23-year-old woman was set on fire while on her way to court to testify in her assault case. In 2020, a group of five men gang-raped a young woman on the pretext of helping her in a previous gang rape case. And just last month, a 21-year-old man poisoned three minor girls because one of them rejected his advances.

To be sure, such gruesome crimes are not specific to the political party in power and are also reported from other districts — such as Hathras in western UP where a Dalit woman was gang-raped and killed in October. But experts and activists say the socio-political fabric in Unnao ensconce key conditions that let crime fester and make law enforcement tough.

“The remnants of the feudal system reign large in Unnao. Mixed with caste hierarchies, it helps the powerful, with large tracts of land, exert influence on the administration, police and politicians. As a result, the weaker sections and victims have no redressal system,” said Poonam Kaushik, a woman’s right activist.

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Unnao has a decades-old relationship with organised crime due to its proximity to major economic centres and borders with five districts. Stories of notorious rivalries between top dons, many of whom were upper-caste landowners, abound in the dusty district headquarters and the countryside.

Take the enmity between Nepal Singh and Baggad Singh in the late 70s, which claimed 80 lives. Or the terror-filled reigns of Munshi Mahipal, Ganga Pille or Lalai Singh that spawned urban legends. “It was said that Lalai Singh cannibalises his victims after murdering them,” said veteran local journalist Shailendra Tiwari.

The most famous of these tales involved two seniors. In the early 1980s, don Kishan Maharaj at 70 murdered rival crime boss Babu Tiwari, 80, in Achalgunj in full public view. The murder — in which Maharaj first overpowered Tiwari and then called on bystanders to watch him kill his rival — sparked a blood feud that lasted three generations and cost at least 60 lives on both sides, said local police.

“There was a time in the 1970s and 80s when killing a man on kutcheri (court) premises or the bus adda (terminal) or bada chauraha (main junction) was the fashion…people elicited pride in doing this and calling it a masculine thing,” said SN Bajpai, a political analyst. The state government doesn’t publicly release district-wise crime figures but a senior police official said the district saw two cases of crime against women every day in 2020 – a year when restrictions on movement and fear of the coronavirus meant that people rarely stepped out of their houses. A woman was molested every two days, and abducted every 1.5 days.

Experts and local activists cite three main reasons for the region’s blood-soaked history.

One, feudal attitudes abound in a region with large landowning families, many of whom hail from upper-caste communities. This became more pronounced in the 1980s and 90s as other states raced past UP, which despite its industrial past and substantial factories, struggled to adapt to the new economy. But the state’s political heft was still outsized in national politics, which meant the influence of local strongmen, who commanded fierce caste and clan-based loyalties, soared. This meant that the political establishment had less incentive in reining in local centres of power and establish an uniform rule of law.

“The history of Unnao is bound with feudalism,” said Mohammad Arif, a local observer. “The ruling class use people to settle their scores and it sets off a cycle.”

In many cases, the local don had ties to large tracts of land, the local dominant caste group and the political administration. In the absence of large-scale economic development, the don wielded disproportionate economic and social power, and therefore the ability to sway elections. His power was also exemplified in exaggerated shows of masculinity that hindered, among other things, women’s independence.

Two, ties between land, influence and honour remain strong. This is important in a state where possession of land is not only a marker of economic mobility but also social might. “Access to land not only guarantees commodity production, food security and better living standards but also provides them better social status and condition. The very nature of control of land is related to land right, which in a nutshell refers to land title in terms of ownership and possession, which cement economic prosperity and social status,” argued a 2019 paper by scholar Bibhuti Bhushan Malik.

The mismatch in land holdings between dominant and weaker communities creates a skewed power dynamic in favour of upper-caste communities. For Dalits and other marginalised castes, therefore, the only way to dignity is through land. With women shut out of the land inheritance process, power and impunity gets concentrated in the hands of men.

“In the absence of land reforms, power gets concentrated in the hands of strongmen. In many cases, institutions meant to enforce law and order become biased towards local power centres. As a result, those with no land or dependents like women have no control over administration,” said Kaushik.

Three, the air of invincibility shrouding local strongmen. Due to caste and other ties, the strongmen have people of the same caste or community controlling other powerful administrative unit such as the police station, politician or media. Moreover, because of their aura and hold over the electorate, the strongmen are influential players in politics, which further colours the administrative response. “In many cases, police have refused to act on strongmen from dominant communities because of caste or clan ties. This kind of impunity is often created by land owning and political influence that is gained through a life of crime,” said Ajay Kumar from the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies.

In the absence of constant and stringent policing, men from dominant communities develop an aura of invincibility and aren’t afraid of law enforcement. In many cases, such impunity lasts for generations as dominant families build on their political power with each passing generation. “Unnao is a place where power talks,” said Anand Mohan Jaiswal, who headed several police stations in the district.

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In many ways, the 2017 rape of a minor girl by Sengar, and the case that followed, encapsulated how strongmen function in Unnao.

A four-time MLA, Sengar raped the young woman, his neighbour, in June, 2017. The case found prominence in April 2018 when the survivor tried to immolate herself in front of the chief minister’s residence and her father died in jail.

Sengar was born in a powerful Thakur clan that had a stranglehold on the region due to their holdings in land, sand mining and brick kilns. His grandfather, Babu Singh, was the village chief and passed the mantle on to Sengar.

After the position was reserved for women, Sengar’s mother Chunni Devi took over. His wife Sangeeta is the sitting Zila Parishad chief while his brother’s wife is the current village head.

Sengar was in almost every major party and won from three separate constituencies in the district. He built his reputation as the strongman and held a big Sunday meeting where people from far-flung villages in the district came to resolve disputes, or beg for jobs. In contrast, the survivor’s father and uncle used to work for the MLA and otherwise eked out an income from a small plot of farmland.

Sengar’s community connections and political heft helped him hatch a “criminal conspiracy” with police officers to “falsely implicate” the survivor’s father, according to a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) charge sheet. With the help of his connections, Sengar was able to rally his supporters to beat up and intimidate the father, even call up senior police officers.

He even kept tabs on the father’s police interrogation by calling the police officers present 10 times – out of a total of 36 calls placed by either associates of Sengar, the MLA, or police officers in a two-hour period. The former MLA also called up the government medical officer and forced him to keep the father in jail. He died five days later. The extent of the impunity was underlined by the fact that three of Sengar’s men gang-raped the girl a week after the original crime in an alleged bid to keep her quiet about the MLA.

Sengar’s dismissal from the party and his conviction in 2019 did little to dent his popularity in the region. In his home village, residents still flaunt their association with the MLA and say his influence is unmatched. “He’ll win again if he stands here,” said a local villager on condition of anonymity.