K C Verma

In the early 1970s, a dacoity was – and may be still is – the most dreaded of crimes in rural Bihar. The number of dacoities that took place in their jurisdictions was often used as the primary yardstick to judge the performance of thana officers, and sometimes even of District Superintendents of Police. It was no wonder that crime prevention and investigation was almost wholly centred on controlling the number of dacoities. This was more applicable to rural areas like Madhepura, where I was posted as the sub-divisional police officer.

The SHOs – the Station House Officers – resorted to various stratagems to avoid registering a case of dacoity; which is defined by the Indian Penal Code as theft by use or threat of use of force by five or more persons acting in concert. The commonest ploy was to register a case of robbery by four, and not five, persons. The more creative of SHOs used sections of law relating to theft, unlawful assembly, rioting, rioting armed with deadly weapons, causing hurt, causing hurt by dangerous weapons, causing grievous hurt, criminal trespass, trespass by night, mischief and acting with common intent.  They would go to any length to avoid using Section 395 of the India Penal Code, the specific section that relates to dacoity.  

 A number of superstitions also grew up around the obsession with dacoity – the commonest of which was that in the police station the First Information Report register and the Station Diary should not be allowed to come in contact with each other; else a dacoity would certainly take place. Policemen were superstitious about even uttering the word ‘dacoity’, choosing instead to refer to it simply as ‘D’. It was not unusual to be woken up at night by the sentry on duty, calling from the veranda outside the bedroom to say, “Huzoor, ‘D’ ho gayee!”

In much this manner, I was woken up quite early one winter morning by a constable who called out from outside my bedroom. “Huzoor, Singheshwar thana!”  

The constable did not even dare say ‘D’! He must have thought that by merely naming the police station, I would understand that a dacoity had taken place in that thana area. Why else would he wake me up at seven?  

It was almost ten by the time I along with the Circle Inspector of Madhepura, Rajeshwar Singh, reached the small village where the dacoity had taken place. The officer in-charge of Singheshwar Police Station had reached earlier and completed the initial formalities of recording statements, preparing lists of stolen property and issuing what were then quaintly called ‘hue and cry notices’.

I now do not recall the name of the village, but that is immaterial. Over the years, it is likely that things have changed. It is equally likely that they have not. But again that is immaterial. What is relevant is that all those years back, one village looked like every other and one dacoity crime scene looked like any other. Most villages were clusters of miserable huts, their mud walls barely keeping the inhabitants safe from the prying winds and prying eyes. The thatched roofs were in all shades from golden yellow to murky brown, depending on how long the straw had been in the sun. The thatch on some houses would even be black – black with dust and soot and exposure to the elements. In the middle of this squalor in many villages would be a house less pitiable, the comparative affluence of the owner being exhibited by the brick walls of the house and a roof made of tin sheets. Some villages had two or three such houses, with the richest owners going to the extent of getting constructed low walls of mud or bricks to enclose space in front of their houses to proclaim their exalted status.

It would almost always be one of these rich villagers in whose house the dacoity would be committed. The dacoits would snatch jewelry worn by womenfolk and break open the two or three steel boxes in the house. It was not unusual for the dacoits to decamp even with kitchen utensils and clothes, leaving the victims with nothing more than the clothes on their backs.

The dacoits almost always smashed open the ‘kothis’ – granaries the size of a water cooler made of mud and straw in which the affluent householders stored paddy and wheat for the whole year.   The ‘kothis’ were broken in search of those small bundles of cloth which the women of the house hid their jewelry in, sometimes without even the knowledge of their husbands.

The house of Dr. Jagat Lal Das in that obscure village looked no different. It was the only pucca house for miles around and it had been thoroughly ransacked. The dacoits had smashed open the ‘kothis’ and the floors of the two rooms of the house were littered with a thick layer of paddy. The stomping by an unending procession of gawking villagers, who trooped through the house quite uninvited, had rendered the grain unfit for consumption.  Three steel boxes had been dragged to the courtyard and broken open. It seemed that all clothes, bed sheets, blankets and kitchen utensils had been taken away by the criminals.

Dr. Jagat Lal Das and his wife sat on the floor in the courtyard, seemingly in shock.  Their daughter sat nearby, angry with the whole world. The sobbing daughter-in-law cowered in a corner of the courtyard, with clotted blood on her ears from which her earrings had been forcefully snatched. Dr. Das wore a pajama and a vest, and the three women shivered in their thin saris, which they pulled tight around themselves and tried to draw over their faces. The family had been asleep and the women wore no upper garment, as was the custom in rural areas. Since the dacoits had taken away even the blankets and sheets, there were no clothes with which the women could have covered their selves.

To me, the family seemed frozen in a tragic tableau. Without really being aware, I noticed that Dr. Das’ teeth were stained red with paan and that his vest was clean but torn; that his wife’s cheeks were streaked with tears and that the daughter-in-law was a buxom woman in her mid-twenties. But it was the daughter’s looks that arrested my eyes. She was about twenty and exquisitely beautiful.  She had well formed features and long black hair. There was a fire in her eyes and a mocking challenge in her demeanour.  Her fiery spirit was also proved by the fact that she had attacked the dacoits and grappled with one of them. Riled by her spirit, the dacoits had given her a severe beating. Later when I saw her exposed back, I involuntarily let out a gasp on seeing the angry red and blue welts on her milky white skin.    

I had seen many similar houses ransacked by dacoits, where the criminals took away everything that they could carry. Yet, the sorry look on the faces of Dr. Das and his family melted my heart. I had never seen such abject misery, underlined by the efforts of the women to hide their nakedness from the villagers, the policemen and, in the case of the daughter-in-law, from her father-in-law as well.

During supervision of the investigation, I learnt that Dr. Das was a licentiate medical practitioner, who attended to the medical needs of all villagers within ten miles. Even then, his modest consultation fee of five rupees was too steep for many and Dr. Das perforce did a lot of charitable work. His son was a jawan in the army and posted somewhere far away. The son regularly sent money home – enough to make the Das family one of the wealthiest in that poor area.

I was quite accustomed to seeing poverty in that area, as also the pitiable condition of victims after traumatic events.  Yet, the dacoity in the Das house greatly incensed me. I was angry because a doctor was the victim. I was angry because their son was away from home, protecting the country. I was also angry because the dacoits had beaten up women. And I was angry because the crime had been committed against a scheduled caste person, the surname ‘Das’ being common amongst the lower castes. 

I spent a long time with the family, repeatedly asking them for accurate descriptions of the miscreants and more details of the property that could help in recovering the stolen items. I left after giving instructions to the officer in charge of Singheshwar, and directing him to keep reporting progress to me.

About  ten days later, I had to visit the scene of another crime and, while returning, I made a short detour to meet Dr Das. His soldier son had taken leave to come home. I reassured them both that we were making all efforts to solve the case. I had hoped to see the pretty daughter too, but she did not come out.

It happens quite often that in spite of every effort, a crime remains unsolved. And so was it with the Jagat Lal Das dacoity case.  Even as I made certain that no effort was spared, the investigation made no headway. A couple of months later, I had to reluctantly admit that while the case remained open, the investigation was as good as over.

Some weeks later, I again visited Dr Das, along with Inspector Rajeshwar Singh and the investigating officer. There was really no reason to visit the crime scene yet again, but I justified the trip to myself as part of the effort to do everything possible to solve the crime in which the victim was a scheduled caste family. The beautiful daughter came out of the house briefly to serve us tea. Yes, she was as beautiful as I remembered her to be.

Days passed. In the routine of office work, law and order issues and supervision of crime, I all but forgot about the dacoity in the Das home.

One day, Inspector Rajeshwar Singh put up a wireless signal for my approval, which related to providing information for answering a question in the State Legislative Assembly. In reply to a question about the number of crimes against scheduled caste persons, Rajeshwar Singh wanted to me to approve a reply stating that no such crimes had been reported.

“How can you send a ‘nil’ statement, Rajeshwar Babu?” I asked. “What about the dacoity in Singheshwar police station?”

The Inspector looked nonplussed.

“The dacoity in Dr Das’ house,” said I to remind him.

“But, Sir that wasn’t a crime against any member of the scheduled castes! Dr Laldas belongs to the upper castes.”

“But isn’t ‘Das’ a surname used by scheduled castes?” I asked.

“Sir, he is not a scheduled caste person at all. His name is Jagat Laldas. The surname is Laldas, not Das. Laldas is an upper caste name. He is a Lala, Sir.”

“Then my good man, why on earth didn’t you tell me earlier? I visited the place of occurrence thrice! Had I known Dr. Das was an upper caste person, I wouldn’t have gone out of my way to such an extent. You could have seen that I was putting in so much greater effort.  You really are quite stupid!”

Rajeshwar Singh’s answer left me quite dumbfounded. He said in a low voice, “Sir I knew you were putting in extra effort and I know you kept prodding the investigating officer to solve the case and recover the stolen property. I thought, Sir, that you were doing this because Dr Laldas is a Kayastha – the same caste as yours.”

“You know that I couldn’t care less about belonging to the same caste!” I blurted out. All of a sudden I was intensely irritated with the Inspector for letting me labour under the impression that Dr. Das belonged to the Scheduled Castes.

I was about to angrily give Rajeshwar Singh a piece of my mind when he added softly, “And Sir, pardon me, but I thought you were going the extra mile because of being interested in the beautiful daughter of Dr. Laldas!”

I somehow managed to keep my outburst in check. I kept very quiet. For a long time. Indeed, I might have even blushed.  Ultimately, all that I said brusquely was “Okay, Rajeshwar Babu, send the nil report!”