The 2017 assembly elections in UP was a significant game changer. The people of Uttar Pradesh sidelined all those political parties who were supporting the goons and elected the BJP with an overwhelming majority. After the election the appointment of Yogi Adityanath as the Chief Minister came as a surprise to most political observers. Since the advent of the Yogi Government, criminals are running from pillar to post to save their lives. When the evil men from the society are eliminated, it’s the common people who have the sigh of relief. As Albert Einstein once said “that the world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it”.
Since the advent of the Yogi Government, the UP Police have killed 50 criminals in over 1,400 encounters. According to the official data, there have been over 1,478 police encounters in the state between 20 March 2017 and 25 March 2018. The highest number of encounters happened in Meerut Zone, 569. Bareilly zone is the next one with 253 encounters. Next one in the queue is the Agra zone where 241 encounters took place followed by Kanpur zone with 112 encounters. In CM Yogi’s Gorakhpur district 51 encounters took place. According to the officials “The police have invoked the stringent National Security Act (NSA) against 188 criminals and seized assets worth over Rs 150 crore. The Gangster’s Act was imposed on 1,455 persons and 4,881 criminals arrested.
The Yogi Government in its relentless pursuit to make UP a crime free state has also passed UPCOCA bill which is designed to take down the mafia and other criminal activities within the state. From a minimum sentence of three years, UPCOCA will endorse even capital punishments. It has recommended a fine of Rs 5 to 25 lakhs and also has extended the period of filing charge sheet from 90 days to 180 days. Various stringent procedures have been added such as attachment of the property of the accused during investigations and no police security to the accused especially those exhibiting political patronage. Police can follow communications between the suspects and the commissioner and the IG zone will jointly approve UPCOCA on the accused. The tremendous rise in criminal graph has necessitated the government to take this laudable step. This drive by Yogi has clearly affected the D-Gang’s operation as well.
Dreaded and anxious criminals hiding in foreign countries have now started giving death threats to MLAs of Yogi Government. In the initial investigation, it has been found that the caller claimed himself to be a lackey of Dawood Ibrahim. According to Oneindia report, there is a direct connection between the threat and the ongoing encounter surge going on in Uttar Pradesh.
Uttar Pradesh has been strategically very important for the D-gang. The highest number of sharpshooters of D-gang comes from Uttar Pradesh. The D-gang’s business is mainly extortion for which they depend upon sharpshooters. As per the intelligence and police records, 130 sharpshooters of D-gang are from Uttar Prradesh. The D-gang has around 200 sharpshooters. Yogi’s encounter drive has affected the operations of the D-gang in UP very badly. Yogi has already made it clear that his encounter drive would not stop and he would complete his objective of finishing the ‘Gunda Raj’ from UP.
Due to UP’s proximity to Nepal; it is ideal for drug business and it serves as an excellent escape route to Pakistan. According to Intelligence Bureau the D Gang has been extremely close to the political set up in Uttar Pradesh. In exchange for protection from the politicians, the D Gang has given arms and also large chunks of cash to the politicians. Not just arms and cash, the D-gang has sometimes provided Drugs for high profile political parties. The fear which has clouded the minds of criminal because of this encounter drive has affected the business of the D-gang. The frustration of their dwindling Business compelled them to resort to giving hollow threat calls to the UP MLAs. Total 12 MLAs have received the threat calls. BJP MLA, Anita Rajput was the first one to get the threat call followed by 11 other MLAs Shyam Bihari Lal (Bareilly), R K Sharma (Bilsi), Vinod Katiyar (Bhognipur), Shashank Trivedi (Sitapur), Lokendra Pratap Singh (Lakhimpur), Veer Vikram Singh (Shahjahanpur), Manvendra Singh (Shahjahanpur) Vinay Dwiwedi (Gonda), Prem Narain Pandey (Gonda) Suresh Srivastava (Lucknow) and Rajnikant Mani Tripathi (Kushinagar). All these MLAs received a message via WhatsApp from +1(903)329-4240 and all of them were asked to pay a sum of 10 lakhs, failing which their family members would be killed. The message was written in Hindi and the person identified himself as Ali Budesh Bhai and claimed that he is a close associate of Dawood. The Police doubt that he is of Indian origin. It has been also found that the Whatsapp group of the MLAs was hacked.
UP police are working with the CBI to extract more details about the case. It has been found that there is a larger conspiracy involved in this threat because the server of Texas was used it Bahrain. Losing UP will be catastrophic for Dawood hence he is trying to scare the government. Yogi Adityanath is a tough Man and he gets the work done. Also the people have been supporting the efforts of CM Yogi and the UP Police to make UP a crime free state. As Yogi Adityanath always say, ‘agar kaayde me rahoge to faayde me rahoge’.