The Real Gabbar of Chambal

The Real Gabbar of Chambal
In 1959, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kailasgh Nath Katju asked his police force: Gabbar, dead or alive.
@Asim Deb

“Mujhe Gabbar chahiye, zinda, sirf zinda” This gristly dialogue hissed from the clenched teeth of Sanjeev Kumar (Thakur Saheb in Sholay). However, it was a vocal copy of the Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kailasgh Nath Katju. In reality, it was ordered in 1959 by the then Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kailasgh Nath Katju, who demanded from his police force: Gabbar, dead or alive. He had no choice. MP police had declared a reward of Rs 20,000 on Gabbar, the UP cops had declared another Rs 20,000 and the Rajasthan police Rs 10,000 — so collectively a total of “pooray pachas hazaar” as in Sholay.

It is being said that Salim Khan, the script writer for Hindi movie Sholay had got the idea of Gabbar Singh from his father who was working with the Madhya Pradesh Police. According to BBC and many other news agencies, the real Gabbar was born in 1926 in Dang village in Gohad Tehsil of Bhind district in Madhya Pradesh.

In 1959, Rajendra Prasad Modi, only 26-year-old Madhya Pradesh Deputy Superintendent of police was not a Thakur Saheb, but Gabbar Singh was real. The real police operation was not as dramatic as the scene of Ramesh Sippy’s blockbuster Sholay’s Thakur Saheb crushing Gabbar Singh’s face with his nail-studded ‘jooti’ (shoe). Rajendra Prasad Modi, now retired, still rues the ‘impotent’ image that the film Sholay has almost permanently pasted on the face of the police forces, as against the brave brigands as to courageous cops. The brave police officer like Rajendra Prasad Modi feels sad that a person taking help of two petty thieves to catch Gabbar and bring him to his feet. And the role played by Asrani, as a jailor, from whose custody Jai and Veeru (Amitabh Bachchan and Dharmendra) escape, the entire police force is shown as a bunch of stupid.

Gabbar’s stories of infamy and wanton cruelty are chronicled in a book ‘The British, The Bandits and The Bordermen’, which is based on the diaries of K F Rustamji, the Madhya Pradesh Inspector General of Police who planned and launched the operation against Gabbar. The book was edited by another IPS officer P V Rajgopal.

Modi was decorated, and was awarded the President’s Police Medal for gallantry, the highest award for a policeman in India.

Speaking to Deccan Herald, Rajgopal, who worked for the Research and Analysis Wing in the late-eighties said: “The real Gabbar, was ruthless, cruel and had a penchant for chopping off the noses of those who informed on him to the police.” According to Rajgopal, sometime in 1957, Bhind’s Gabbar, codenamed G-4, lined up 22 children and shot them “because somebody from that village, had reported about him to the police”. Rustamji’s book says that Gabbar Singh was told by a tantric that he would be immortal if he chopped off the noses of 116 children and offered them to the deity he worshipped.

Sippy’s Gabbar is also referred in Tarun Coomar Bhaduri’s book ‘Abhisapta Chambal’ (The Accursed Chambal).

In 1955, Gabbar Singh left the village and joined Kalyan Singh Gujjar’s gang and subsequently formed his own. According to Rustamji’s, Gabbar could create enough fear in the areas of Dholpur Bhind, Gwalior and Etawah that no one dared to leak any information regarding him. Interestingly this ‘real’ Gabbar was more of dreadful than the ‘reel’ one. The real Gabbar Singh had vowed to cut noses of 116 people as one ‘tantrik’ had advised him of doing so.

In this particular era, the Madhya Pradesh’s Chambal Valley was so tensed that even the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was finding it hard to control the situation.The Opposition party in the Madhya Pradesh state Assembly had just paraded all the 10 victims of Gabbar, whose noses were cut off and sent the men back as “mementoes”, same what Gabbar did in Sholay.

Chief Minister Katjus political career was at stake, and in 1959, the task of eliminating Gabbar was was given to MP Police officer Rajendra Prasad Modi, a wiry, only 26-year-old Madhya Pradesh Deputy Superintendent of police who had already proved his mettle in wiping out some dreaded gangs of dacoits, including the legendary Putli Bai. Modi had been after Gabbar for some time, and had frequently raided Dang, the Bhind district village he hailed from. He had reports that Gabbar even forced his own fellow villagers to part with their money as well as women as comfort girls during his periodic sojourns. Modi had one day received intelligence that Gabbar was visiting the village and rushed there, but the brigand had vamoosed.

However, he found some commotion in Dang that day, because a home was on fire and a small boy, Shikhar, was trapped inside. The gutsy officer plunged in, and plunged out with the boy, safe, and handed him over to his family. He won total admiration that day, and the reward came just a few days later. Late one night, on November 13, 1959, even as he was dozing off in his bed, a man, some neighbour of Shikhar from Dang village, crept up to startle Modi in his bungalow. “We all see your efforts to get Gabbar, and we want the same. Please wipe out that scourge. You saved Shikhar, that day and now you have to save the rest of us. I have come to tell you that we know Gabbar is coming to our village tomorrow to again demand ransom.”

That was enough. On 13th November 1959, Modi drummed up a force close to 500 men and with the man guiding them, quietly reached the spot, at Ghum-Ka-Pura village, in a saucer-like depression between the national highway and the narrow gauge railway line, in Bhind district. Gabbar was there already, resting. Thus, when Modi ordered about two dozen of his men to open fire, the gang had little time to regroup and respond. In no time, most of them lay dead, and Gabbar was about to run. “That is when I lobbed the grenade, and it hit his chin, blowing out his jaws, as you see in the photograph” Modi told TSI. “But I still feel frustrated that his kin now accuse me of killing him for no reason. They say he had not come for ransom, but this is not true.” Since accusations always fly against cops who are honest and are true fighters and this was not the first time that Modi had slain a dreaded criminal. However, the entire system of becoming a baaghi (outlaw) has a different history, and these men were originally not simple criminals.

Rustamji, who was earlier working as special security officer to Nehru, wanted to present a unique gift to his PM.As Gabbar was killed a day ahead of Nehru’s birthday, Rustamji decided to present the news of Gabbar’s death as a gift to the ex-prime minister.

Sources: Deccan Herald, Zee News, Sunday, Aajtak

Though the dacoits of our times are little more than murderers and rapists, mythology has it that the Chambal River is the symbol of Draupadi’s open tresses, which she had vowed never to plait till she washed it in the blood of Dushshasan, who had disrobed her in open court. Thus, revenge for restoration of honour lies at the core of Chambal’s psyche, the psyche of the people of one of the toughest terrains anywhere: the bihad, or the arid, ravines, where life is always a massive struggle. And traditionally, whenever anyone from these bihad had felt wronged, he had become a baaghi and not rested till revenge had doused the fire in his heart. Such was the great procession of baaghis Pana, Sultan Singh, Man Singh, Amritlal, Lakhan, Gabbra (Gabbar) and Putli Bai, and among them, Daku Man Singh even now stands the tallest in stature. He had laid down a code of conduct, which denounced killing or sexual assault of women, robbing for robbing’s sake, and such other dictats. It was not a charmed life, but there was a level of romance. The dacoits even had their own wonderful folk music typically called Ala-Udhal, and the other legend, Putli Bai was a fabled singer of those soulful ballads on two fearless warriors, who never rested till their enemies were alive. And though later day bandits, like Phulan Devi, were complete perverts, the legend of Putli Bai lives on.

In fact, Putli Bai was the first among Modi’s many trophies. Once a dacoit’s moll, this bewitching beauty had become a terror in her own right in the Chambal of 1950s. It was January 23, 1958. Modi got information one day that Pulti and her gang had taken shelter in Sangli-Harisa village of Bhind district. He raced there and surrounded the dacoits. “Soon after, we came upon the gang”, Modi recalls. “But I did not order to open fire till we were a mere six feet away from where the gang was. Then, the firing started. In minutes, 11 dacoits lay dead. As we counted the bodies, the third happened to be Putli’s”, Modi told TSI.

But then, in life, often the highest praise comes from the worst foe. And this one came from a former nightmare of Chambal, Mohar Singh, who had surrendered in the 1970s under a special initiative by social reformer Jai Prakash Narayan (JP). TSI met him at a public meeting at Mehgaon, 70 kilometres from Bhind town. Resplendent in his flowing dhoti-kurta, his thick black beard, a gun nestled against his legs, and a red vermillion teeka on his forehead, Singh, now in politics had much to praise in Modi: On the very first occasion that I saw him, I instinctively knew that here comes an honest and extremely courageous officer, and at the same time a perfect gentleman. I have a great desire to meet him once again some day.

Today, after the JP initiative led to the surrender of about a thousand dacoits, and after nasty riders of the Chanbal tradition like Phulan have been slain, the guns are more or less silent in Chambal’s bihad. But the legend of Draupadi, and the concomitant threat of another man or woman jumping into the ravines, gun in hand, is still alive. But the legends of the likes of Rajendra Prasad Modi live a quiet life, unsung anymore today!

Dacoit Malkhan Singh, negotiating with the government officials before surrender.

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/35776/gabbar-singh-ramesh-sippy-missed.html
http://zeenews.india.com/news/india/gabbar-was-gifted-to-jawaharlal-nehru-on-birthday_1646865.html
http://www.thesundayindian.com/en/story/the-cop-who-killed-gabbar-singh/24/5855/
http://aajtak.intoday.in/crime/story/the-real-dacoit-gabbar-singh-took-off-the-ear-nose-of-cops-1-856416.html

March 21, 2016
On the eve of International Day of Forests on Sunday, erstwhile bandits who ruled Chambal gathered in Jaipur to reminisce, and to tell the government that they wish to protect their land, as, they all said, people back home still respect their word.

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