Love for girls was his Achilles? heel

SALIM WAS not a name but a title bequeathed on Pehalwan Gujjar by his mentors for his hankering after beauties.

SALIM WAS not a name but a title bequeathed on Pehalwan Gujjar by his mentors for his hankering after beauties.

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His godfather Nirbhay Singh Gujjar always thought Pehalwan’s weakness for Anarkalis was a popular fancy of the royals. So he bestowed the title Salim (the son of the Great Akbar and lover of the legendary Anarkali) on the Pehalwan.

And as if to justify the title, the dacoit, who always loved to live life King size, never missed a chance to booze and womanise.

In his six years’ as a dacoit leader, Salim always had his own ‘harem’ though its size depended on the supply. Such was his craving for girls, that once Salim enjoyed the exclusive company of seven girls. Otherwise, his harem always had a minimum of three girls.

In his earlier avatar as the leader of an independent gang, Salim’s used to either kidnap girls or lure them to join his team. Sadhna, Sapna Dilliwali, Urmila and Neelu formed the first batch of his beaus.

Those who had tracked Salim for a long time disclosed his special liking for Sadhna and Neelu, who were known for their beauty.

But all of them were gunned down in a police encounter in the same Ayana forest where Salim’s life also came to an end today.

The killing of his beauties angered him so much that he hunted down the police informers and hacked them to death near Ajitmal.

But Salim soon overcame his grief with recruitments of new females.

So over the next four years Uma, Sapna, Aarti, Sunita Meena or Jijji, Sulekha Dobhin, Sunita Dangi, Parwati Purwar, Geeta Jatav, Seema and several others joined his gang. Of them six were killed in police encounters while three had been arrested.

“In fact his weakness for women helped us to tighten the noose around his gang,” said a cop long involved in operations against Salim.

In fact, as a cop said, Nirbhay’s prediction on Salim came true when the police in their final assault capitalised on the dacoit’s weakness for women.