Bawaria gang and the 2005 murder of an AIADMK MLA in Tamil Nadu

By the early hours of January 9, 2005, around 2 a.m., darkness had engulfed the narrow stretch branching off the Grand Northern Trunk Road, also known as the Kolkata-Chennai National Highway. The villagers of Thanakulam near Periyapalayam, about 60 km from Chennai, were fast asleep, unaware of the danger approaching. A fully covered lorry — HR 38 J 5249 — rolled quietly along the deserted road and halted half a kilometre from the village. Six to eight men climbed down silently from the lorry and moved towards the house at the village entrance. It was the residence of K. Sudarsanam, then a sitting MLA of the AIADMK, and former Minister.

At 2.15 a.m., with the swing of an axe, the stillness was shattered. The armed gang smashed the wooden front door and stormed inside. Their leader stood guard outside, gripping a gun. The gang quickly climbed the staircase to the first floor. They bolted the room of Sudarsanam’s  elder son, Vijayakumar, who was sleeping inside. They then moved towards the room in which his second son, K.S. Sathish Kumar, was asleep. They shattered the glass panes of the room’s window and through the gap, rained blows on Mr. Sathish Kumar with blunt iron rods.

When his wife, Geetha, rushed forward, one of the men twisted her left arm until she cried out in pain. Their eight-year-old daughter clung to the attackers’ legs, begging them not to hurt her father. But the gang ignored her pleas, continued assaulting Sathish Kumar and Geetha, and ripped jewellery off Geetha’s body at knifepoint.

Stepping out with sickle

Awakened by the commotion, Sudarsanam, sleeping with his wife in a room on the ground floor, stepped out carrying a sickle. The moment the assailants saw the weapon, they fired a .12-bore round into the right side of his chest. He collapsed and died instantly. The gang then made its way through his bedroom, the pooja room, and the room next to the kitchen. They broke open almirahs, overturned beds, and looted nearly 60 sovereigns of gold jewellery. Three women — Jayamal  (Sudarsanam’s wife), Thatchayani (his mother-in-law), and Neela (the household maid) — were left unharmed but terrified.

Recalling the incident, Mr. Sathish Kumar said, “I heard the sound of my room door being struck multiple times and looked through the window. I saw six to seven persons trying to break in. I held the door tightly from behind but couldn’t stop them. They broke the window next to the door and attacked me with an iron rod through the opening. A blow to my left shoulder made me lose balance. They entered the room and I had fainted. After 10 to 15 days of treatment, I was told that my father had been shot dead.”

Hearing the family’s screams, villagers gathered outside the boundary wall and hurled stones at the dacoits. The gang fired a round at the crowd and escaped into the darkness, boarding the lorry parked half a kilometre away.

Tiruvallur Superintendent of Police V. Vardharaju rushed to the scene, cordoned off the area, and summoned his team. “The public had gathered in large numbers by them. The crime scene was chaotic, with bloodstains everywhere. Our job was to protect the scene. A pair of chappals used by the accused and an empty bullet shell were recovered,” he said.

S. R. Jangid, who was then the Inspector-General of Police (North), led the special teams which cracked the cases of dacoities.
| Photo Credit:
M. SRINATH

The dacoity and murder shook the entire State. Special teams were formed under Inspector-General of Police (North) S.R. Jangid. Deputy Superintendents of Police V. Jayakumar (Thirukoilur), M. Sudhakar  (Madhavaram), C. Vijay Kumar (Tiruvallur), and Ara. Arul Arasu (Hosur) joined the investigation. Mr. Vardharaju said that as the probe began, they noticed a similar pattern in several other highway dacoities in the State. Working with Cuddalore SP Davidson Devasirvatham, the team mapped the crimes.

Decade of dacoity

For nearly 10 years, a string of dacoities involving murders and grievous assaults — all with a similar modus operandi — had been reported across Tamil Nadu. Between 1995 and 2005, 24 such incidents had occurred along the National Highway from the Tiruvallur-Andhra Pradesh border to the Krishnagiri-Karnataka border, resulting in 13 deaths and 63 serious injuries. Chance fingerprints were lifted at many scenes, but there were no matches in police records. Similar offences in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka remained unsolved.

“The gang spoke only in Hindi while committing the crimes. Words like Chabi doh [Give the key) and Chup raho [Keep quiet] were used. It was clear that this group was from north India,” said Thillai Natarajan, former investigation officer in the Periyapalayam case.

The gang first struck in Tamil Nadu on June 7, 1995, at the house of M. Mohan Kumar at Walajapet, then part of Vellore district. It killed him, seriously injured his wife and two children, and stole jewellery and cash worth over ₹50,000. The case was closed as undetectable three years later. The following year, the gang struck again in the same town, at another house. After a five-year gap, the gang resurfaced in 2001, committing a major dacoity at Avinashi, followed by three more robberies in Dharmapuri and Salem districts.

Their crimes surged in 2002, with eight dacoities reported in Salem, Avinashi, Kangeyam, Gummidipoondi, Athur, Kariamangalam, Burgur, and Sriperumbudur. The most sensational was in Salem on September 12, 2002, when they killed Congress functionary Thalamuthu Natarajan  and his watchman Gopal and injured six others. A Sub-Inspector reportedly saw the gang walk away but failed to act. They walked two kilometres, boarded a lorry, and vanished.

In 2003, they struck at four locations and committed murders at three of them: Sholavaram, Walajapet and Natrampalli. In 2004, they targeted Thiruverkadu, Vellavedu, Sriperumbudur, and Thiruvalam. In Thiruverkadu, house owner Gajendran was shot dead, his watchman murdered, and two others were injured. In Sriperumbudur, they slammed a 14-year-old girl against a wall.

The breakthrough

Mr. Jangid said that going by the modus operandi, investigators suspected the involvement of north Indian criminal gangs but could not identify any gang in particular. Teams visited Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Madhya Pradesh, ruling out criminal tribes in those regions. They then focused on Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Delhi, and Punjab, as investigation pointed to similarities with the Bawaria gang’s modus operandi.

“Initially, it was a wild goose chase. Every lead was pursued. Fingerprint experts travelled with the teams carrying the chance prints lifted from scenes. Police records in these States were checked,” Mr. Jangid said. A major challenge was that police forces in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab, and Rajasthan did not regularly preserve the fingerprints or maintain the detailed records of hardened criminals.

The breakthrough came on February 1, 2005, when Inspector of Police (Fingerprints) Dhanancheliyan, who was part of the Uttar Pradesh team, found that four chance prints matched a thumb impression recorded in 1996 in the register of transit prisoners at Agra Central Jail. The print belonged to Laxman alias Ashok, a Bawaria criminal from Chandanpura  village in Bharatpur district, Rajasthan. He was linked to six dacoities in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.

Tamil Nadu Police teams camped in the region for days and arrested the criminals. They seized a sheet from a schoolgirl’s notebook containing phone numbers of gang members. Call records and confessions of an accused in Rajasthan confirmed the involvement of Bawaria gang members from Haryana and Rajasthan.

The Bawarias were among the most violent criminal groups, operating primarily at night along highways. Their lorries had secret chambers to hide weapons. They parked their vehicles near roadside eateries and walked four or five kilometres to homes they had targeted, smashing doors with stones or steel rods and unleashing brutal, unprovoked violence.

Thirteen persons were eventually arrested, including Omprakash Bawaria alias Oma, 55, of Ghargot village in Faridabad district (Haryana), the gang leader; his brother Jagadish; Laxman; Rakesh alias Kuttu; Anguri; Jaildar Singh alias Lali Master, a schoolteacher; and three women. Two gang members were killed in an encounter near Meerut.

Courts later convicted several of them, including Oma and Ashok, in four cases, including the murders of a Walajapet doctor and Sudarsanam. In 2006, Oma and Laxman received the death penalty in the Walajapet case, while others were given life imprisonment. The High Court later commuted the death sentences. Oma died in Vellore Central Prison, and three others continued to serve life terms.

Handy vehicle: One of the two lorries used by the gang to escape after committing dacoities in Tamil Nadu.
| Photo Credit:
M. SRINATH

32 persons named

In the Sudarsanam murder case, 32 persons were named in the chargesheet filed by the Periyapalayam police on September 18, 2006. Of them, 22 were at large. Oma and Boora died during trial, and one was treated as a juvenile. Seven were tried, but the case was later split after three women jumped bail. The trial ultimately proceeded against Jagadish, Rakesh, Laxman, and Jaildar. Additional Public Prosecutor D. Maharajan said the prosecution examined 66 witnesses and produced 52 exhibits and material objects, including two country-made guns and two lorries used by the accused.

The four men were brought to the XV Additional Sessions Court at Singaravelar Maligai under tight security on November 24 this year. Judge L. Abraham Lincoln held that the eight-year-old child, who had held the attackers’ legs and pleaded with them not to harm her father, had clearly seen their faces and credibly identified them. He noted that the fingerprint expert’s evidence corroborated the eyewitness accounts and supported the prosecution’s case. “The prosecution has produced unassailable evidence against the accused, and the defence has not raised any serious doubt about the credibility of the witnesses,” he said.

However, the court found that the prosecution had “miserably failed” to prove the involvement of Jaildar or link him to the gang through admissible evidence. He was acquitted. The remaining three were sentenced to four to five life terms under Sections 397 (robbery or dacoity with attempt to cause death or grievous hurt) and 396 (dacoity with murder) of the Indian Penal Code, and for illegal possession of arms and ammunition. They will remain in prison for the rest of their life.

The grave dacoities committed by the Bawaria gang came to an end a few years ago and justice, even if limited, was served. However, several gang members remain at large and continue to evade trial in pending cases.