Dilerganj Carnage and Raja Bhaiyya
March 7th 2013 02:58
The President of the Indian Peoples Front Akhilendra Pratap Singh has demanded that all cases against Raghuraj Pratap Singh who has been accused of being involved in the death of Police Officer Zia ul Haq in Kunda should be reopened especially those in which injustice has been meted out to the members of the minority community.
There are several cases where members of the minority community have been targeted and no action has been taken to redress their grievances added Ajit Chak the media spokesperson of the Indian Peoples Front.
As an acid test of its secular credentials the Samajwadi Party government must immediatle provide justice to all members of the minorities who have been wronged by Raja Bhaiya and the most prominent case in this regard is the Dilerganj Carnage of 1995 in which three girls were raped one youth shot and 26 houses burnt in a village in Kunda, says Singh.
According to Shri Akhilendra Pratap Singh the first case was in July 1995 when three girls belonging to the minority community that too of a backward caste were raped and murdered in a village called Dilerganj in Kunda. In this organized and stage managed riot 26 houses belonging to members of the minority community were gutted by an armed mob which rampaged thru the village. A local village youth Haneef was shot dead after being mercilessly beaten and his body was tied to the back of a motorcycle and dragged around in the entire village to terrorize the locals.
A memorandum was submitted by a fact finding team in this regard to the then UP Governor Shri Motil Lal Vora, but no action has emerged as a result of this, added Singh.
Recalling the entire incident he said that when a newspaper report emerged in the press that three girls of a particular community had committed suicide by throwing themselves in the river, the President of the All India Muslim Forum (AIMF) Shri Nehaluddin Ahmad had constituted a fact finding team to go to Dilerganj and investigate the matter as it looked suspicious.
On further investigation it was revealed that this was no case of suicide rather a serious case of rape rioting murder and carnage, all hushed up by the local administration for fear of some feudal power. When the AIMF team reached Dilerganj some of the members broke down in tears says Singh when they saw the magnitude of the tragedy that had overtaken the village. The rioters had not even spared a small child, the locals told the team.
According to the village elders who met the team the dispute began when one Haneef a local lad refused to pay the feudal tax imposed on the village by Raja Bhaiyya. He said that there was no need to pay tax to any Raja and the tax should be paid to the government, for this he was shot dead and his body dragged around the village square behind a motor cycle the elders told the fact finding team.
The village was set on fire and three girls were raped and killed and their bodies thrown into the river nearby. The fire tender which was called to fight the blaze left without doing its job out of fear of reprisal from the feudal lords. Its excuse that there was no water nearby to extinguish the fire, even though the river was near enough for the body of three girls to be thrown into it says Singh.
Later a delegation led by AIMF President Nehaluddin Ahmad which included Ajit Chak, Arshad Azmi, Naseem Khan and Salahuddin Khan met the UP Governor Moti Lal Vora and submitted a memorandum to him demanding the arrest of Raja Bhaiyya and his cronies and a high level investigation in the matter. This matter is still lying in the back burner says Singh.
Yogesh Mishra writing in outlook says, Raghuraj Singh alias Rajja Bhaiyya is called noor-e-nazar (literally, 'light of the eyes', figuratively, apple of the eyes) of the Beti riyasat. When Rajja Bhaiyya got elected to the UP assembly in 1993, not only did he make a new record for the largest margin, but he was also then the youngest MLA in the 12th state assembly. Since then his victory procession had been going on unhindered. The margin of his wins had also been increasing. Till chief minister Mayawati stepped in, jailed him under POTA, and also accused him of plotting to murder her with Mafia help.
Rajja Bhaiyya's primary education was at Allahabad CMP College. His father Raja Uday Pratap Singh was not in favour of providing higher education to Raghuraj because he believed that 'highly educated people are cowards.' But due to the pressure from his mother's family, Rajja Bhaiyya was brought to Lucknow. Hot-headed from student years, he was first booked in 1989 under section 147, 148, 149 and 307, although his name had been whispered about in a murder case in Pratapgah way back in 1982.
On July 6, 1995, it was the Dilerganj carnage which spread his notoriety beyond the boundaries of the district. It all started with 'rumours' of rape of a woman from a certain community, which retaliated by laying siege to Dilerganj, dominated by the other community. In the firing that ensued, women and infants were among those killed. Mulayam Singh Yadav, who is now fighting for Rajja Bhaiyya against his POTA arrest, had not let the assembly run for a week, in protest (In 1997 Rajja Bhaiyya came to the rescue of BJP by helping split the Congress and the Samajwadi Party, for which he was rewarded with a ministerial berth in the mammoth ministry).
Today there are 35 cases against him, out of which 14 were filed after incurring Mayawati's wrath, although he had even earlier been charged under the Gangster Act and almost all the sections of IPC. The lake spread cross 35 bighas in Beti and Bhadari is the stuff of horrifying and mysterious legend and folklore among the people in Pratapgarh and Kunda. If the stories are to be believed, crocodiles were kept in the lake and anyone opposing the feudals became a meal for the crocodiles. The government has now declared it as Ambedkar Sanctuary.
But people in the district make contradictory statements. On one hand they accuse Rajja Bhaiyya of exploitation, on the other they say that cutting trees is the gravest crime in the riyasat. After all if his hobbies include rearing horses and dogs, flying airplanes and helicopters, zipping around at high speeds in imported cares, they also include granting huge amounts as largesse to the poor for weddings.
There are several cases where members of the minority community have been targeted and no action has been taken to redress their grievances added Ajit Chak the media spokesperson of the Indian Peoples Front.
As an acid test of its secular credentials the Samajwadi Party government must immediatle provide justice to all members of the minorities who have been wronged by Raja Bhaiya and the most prominent case in this regard is the Dilerganj Carnage of 1995 in which three girls were raped one youth shot and 26 houses burnt in a village in Kunda, says Singh.
A memorandum was submitted by a fact finding team in this regard to the then UP Governor Shri Motil Lal Vora, but no action has emerged as a result of this, added Singh.
Recalling the entire incident he said that when a newspaper report emerged in the press that three girls of a particular community had committed suicide by throwing themselves in the river, the President of the All India Muslim Forum (AIMF) Shri Nehaluddin Ahmad had constituted a fact finding team to go to Dilerganj and investigate the matter as it looked suspicious.
According to the village elders who met the team the dispute began when one Haneef a local lad refused to pay the feudal tax imposed on the village by Raja Bhaiyya. He said that there was no need to pay tax to any Raja and the tax should be paid to the government, for this he was shot dead and his body dragged around the village square behind a motor cycle the elders told the fact finding team.
The village was set on fire and three girls were raped and killed and their bodies thrown into the river nearby. The fire tender which was called to fight the blaze left without doing its job out of fear of reprisal from the feudal lords. Its excuse that there was no water nearby to extinguish the fire, even though the river was near enough for the body of three girls to be thrown into it says Singh.
Later a delegation led by AIMF President Nehaluddin Ahmad which included Ajit Chak, Arshad Azmi, Naseem Khan and Salahuddin Khan met the UP Governor Moti Lal Vora and submitted a memorandum to him demanding the arrest of Raja Bhaiyya and his cronies and a high level investigation in the matter. This matter is still lying in the back burner says Singh.
Yogesh Mishra writing in outlook says, Raghuraj Singh alias Rajja Bhaiyya is called noor-e-nazar (literally, 'light of the eyes', figuratively, apple of the eyes) of the Beti riyasat. When Rajja Bhaiyya got elected to the UP assembly in 1993, not only did he make a new record for the largest margin, but he was also then the youngest MLA in the 12th state assembly. Since then his victory procession had been going on unhindered. The margin of his wins had also been increasing. Till chief minister Mayawati stepped in, jailed him under POTA, and also accused him of plotting to murder her with Mafia help.
Rajja Bhaiyya's primary education was at Allahabad CMP College. His father Raja Uday Pratap Singh was not in favour of providing higher education to Raghuraj because he believed that 'highly educated people are cowards.' But due to the pressure from his mother's family, Rajja Bhaiyya was brought to Lucknow. Hot-headed from student years, he was first booked in 1989 under section 147, 148, 149 and 307, although his name had been whispered about in a murder case in Pratapgah way back in 1982.
On July 6, 1995, it was the Dilerganj carnage which spread his notoriety beyond the boundaries of the district. It all started with 'rumours' of rape of a woman from a certain community, which retaliated by laying siege to Dilerganj, dominated by the other community. In the firing that ensued, women and infants were among those killed. Mulayam Singh Yadav, who is now fighting for Rajja Bhaiyya against his POTA arrest, had not let the assembly run for a week, in protest (In 1997 Rajja Bhaiyya came to the rescue of BJP by helping split the Congress and the Samajwadi Party, for which he was rewarded with a ministerial berth in the mammoth ministry).
Today there are 35 cases against him, out of which 14 were filed after incurring Mayawati's wrath, although he had even earlier been charged under the Gangster Act and almost all the sections of IPC. The lake spread cross 35 bighas in Beti and Bhadari is the stuff of horrifying and mysterious legend and folklore among the people in Pratapgarh and Kunda. If the stories are to be believed, crocodiles were kept in the lake and anyone opposing the feudals became a meal for the crocodiles. The government has now declared it as Ambedkar Sanctuary.
But people in the district make contradictory statements. On one hand they accuse Rajja Bhaiyya of exploitation, on the other they say that cutting trees is the gravest crime in the riyasat. After all if his hobbies include rearing horses and dogs, flying airplanes and helicopters, zipping around at high speeds in imported cares, they also include granting huge amounts as largesse to the poor for weddings.
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