From an “impatient” entrant of pupil politics to one of many dreaded criminals of UP and at last a white-collar politician — Singh’s journey is an ideal plot for a Bollywood thriller.
He has been an MLA (2002 to 2009), a former BSP MP (2009 to 2014) and is presently within the Janata Dal (United).
But simply when he was getting ready the bottom to enter Parliament as soon as once more after combating the upcoming Lok Sabha polls from Jaunpur, a judgment by an MP/MLA courtroom within the metropolis dashed all his hopes.
Singh, 48, was final week sentenced to seven years imprisonment in a 2020 abduction and extortion case after being convicted for abducting, abusing and threatening Namami Gange venture supervisor Abhinav Singhal.
According to BJP insiders, the judgment, which got here three days after Singh had declared on social media that he would battle the Lok Sabha polls from Jaunpur constituency, has come as a jolt for the JD(U) chief whose political profession could be over now.
“He (Singh) had been preparing to fight the polls for the past few months. He was in touch with both the BJP and SP. However, ever since the BJP declared Kripashankar Singh as its candidate from Jaunpur, Singh was taken aback that the JD(U) had been denied the seat in coalition (National Democratic Alliance),” an aide of Singh instructed ThePrint on situation of anonymity.
“Singh had been lobbying for a ticket from the SP too but with his conviction, he won’t be able to fight the elections this time as the sentence can be suspended only if the high court or Supreme Court do so. He doesn’t have that much time,” the aide added.
Speaking from contained in the police van earlier than he was taken inside Jaunpur jail Wednesday, Singh termed the courtroom order as “a conspiracy hatched to stop him from fighting elections”.
Dhananjay Singh’s legal professionals Wednesday filed an attraction within the Allahabad High Court difficult the order of the native Jaunpur courtroom and demanding that the identical be quashed. He has additionally sought bail until the time the courtroom decides his petition.
Speculation is, nevertheless, rife that whereas he himself is in jail, he could discipline his spouse, Shrikala Reddy, the sitting Jaunpur district panchayat chairperson, from the seat and that will find yourself taking away some votes from BJP’s Kripashankar Singh, a Rajput like Dhananjay.
Reddy Wednesday appealed to her husband’s supporters to train restraint and acknowledged that he “needed their sympathy”, after Singh’s supporters had been heard elevating slogans in opposition to Union residence minister and BJP chief Amit Shah whereas the criminal-turned-politician was being taken away following the courtroom sentence.
Speaking to ThePrint, a Shrikala aide mentioned that Singh will resolve about her candidacy for the Lok Sabha polls.
The seat has most Dalit voters at about 20 p.c, adopted by Yadavs at 17 p.c, Brahmins at 14 p.c, Muslims at 11 p.c, and Kshatriyas at 11 p.c, based on native Samajwadi Party (SP) leaders.
Jaunpur has a sizeable inhabitants of higher caste voters together with Yadavs and Muslims, and within the final Lok Sabha election, it was among the many seats the place the SP-BSP alliance had defeated the ruling BJP. The constituency has despatched a number of Rajput candidates to Parliament.
The seat has 2.43 lakh Brahmins, 1.91 lakhs Rajputs, 2.21 lakh Muslims and a couple of.25 lakh Yadavs, based on native SP leaders.
Also Read: ‘Laws expire at UP border’: In the MP/MLA courts of the ganglands, instances come to crawl
From pupil politics to ‘most wanted’
Kolkata-born Dhananjay Singh’s household shifted to Jaunpur someday after his delivery in 1975.
Singh’s tryst with crime started whereas he was at school, when the primary case was lodged in opposition to him for breach of peace, mischief inflicting injury, and prison intimidation, based on police data.
According to media reviews, his identify got here to the fore in an try to homicide case in 1992, and he appeared for 3 of his board exams whereas in police custody. He was then finding out in Jaunpur’s Tilak Dhari Singh Inter College.
Suvrat Tripathi, who retired as DG from the UP police and is now an advocate within the Supreme Court, instructed ThePrint that Singh was a small-time prison within the early Nineteen Nineties who steadily turned “most wanted” and subsequently joined politics.
UP CPI(M) chief Phool Chand Yadav — whose nephew Om Prakash Yadav was killed in Bhadohi Police’s 1998 encounter and handed off as Singh — instructed ThePrint that Singh was a dabangg (strongman) entrant in pupil politics who was booked for a number of petty offences throughout his pupil life in Jaunpur, reminiscent of bodily assault and extortion, earlier than his rise as a muscleman.
Singh’s starvation for limelight and fame was unleashed when he reached the University of Lucknow, the place he befriended pupil leaders like Dayashankar Singh and rising gangsters like Abhay Singh who would prolong help to these combating the coed union polls.
Singh turned one of many lively college students who led agitations in opposition to the Mandal Commission (for the socially and educationally backward lessons) in his college days.
“The period from the 1990s till 2006 was the most turbulent period for student politics. A lot of criminal elements from east UP would come to Lucknow University during student union elections. Voting percentage used to be very low as a large number of students, especially girls, would keep away from elections, which would be captured by gangsters. Elements like Abhay Singh and Dhananjay Singh would need a place to lodge their supporters, and hostels came handy. Several hostels, like Golden Jubilee, were captured while the police remained silent spectators,” recounts J.V. Vaishampayan, former professor at University of Lucknow and former vice-chancellor of Kanpur University.
While Singh acknowledged to the Election Commission that he had accomplished commencement from University of Lucknow in 1995, his identify had surfaced within the sensational case of the killing of an assistant warden of Lucknow’s iconic La Martiniere College on 7 March, 1997, which shook the state.
The homicide happened when UP was below president’s rule however two weeks after the crime, BSP chief Mayawati returned to energy within the state.
Police officers who served in Lucknow throughout these troubled occasions (Nineteen Nineties) say that like a number of rising gangsters at the moment, Singh was concerned in blackmailing officers for getting authorities contracts for laying of phone cable traces, railway contracts for scrap, contracts pertaining to the Nagar Nigam and tenders of the Zila Panchayat.
“Dhananjay was friends with Abhay Singh but later fell out with him over tenders for government contracts. They were involved in blackmailing for getting government contracts for laying of telephone cable lines, contracts pertaining to Nagar Nigam and tenders of Zila Panchayat work,” Rajesh Pandey, a founding member of UP’s Special Task Force, mentioned.
Singh was arrested in December 2011 in reference to a double homicide case of a contractor and a tea stall proprietor who had been killed on account of a rivalry over PWD contracts in Kerakat space of Jaunpur in April 2010 based on the police. The arrest of the then BSP MP had come within the backdrop of Singh falling out with the BSP management. That case continues to be pending in courtroom.
Also Read: Be horrified by response to Atiq Ahmed killing. But cease calling Indians bloodthirsty fools
‘Nobody would dare to testify against him’
Abhay Singh, now an SP MLA, has admitted in a number of interviews that he fell out with Dhananjay Singh after the homicide of Ayodhya contractor Santosh Singh in 1998.
Speaking to ThePrint, Abhay Singh alleged that Dhananjay Singh and Guddu Muslim, an aide of the infamous Atiq Ahmed, had plotted Santosh’s homicide.
“They called him for a meeting in 1998 and poisoned him. A case was lodged in Hussainganj police station of Lucknow in connection with the murder, and Dhananjay Singh became one of the accused. However, he got bail and got acquitted in the case due to lack of evidence. Nobody dared to testify against him,” mentioned Abhay Singh.
He additional alleged that Dhananjay Singh was behind the homicide of the La Martiniere College warden however his involvement couldn’t be proved on account of lack of proof.
While he was accused in a number of instances, the primary concrete motion in opposition to Dhananjay got here solely within the aftermath of the July 1997 daylight homicide of Public Works Department assistant engineer Gopal Sharan Srivastava, when the Mayawati authorities got here below strain to behave.
Srivastava was related to then chief minister Mayawati’s dream venture, Dr Ambedkar Memorial Park.
Accused within the case, Singh was on the run and declared an absconder by the UP Police. A reward of Rs 50,000 was declared on his head — a sum that was then reserved just for probably the most hardened criminals.
In 2000, Singh was charged with murdering Dr Bachi Lal Rawat, the then Director General (household welfare) of UP. Lal was out for a morning stroll when he was shot useless at level clean vary.
After being on the run for a very long time within the aftermath of the PWD engineer homicide case, Singh surrendered earlier than a Jaunpur courtroom in January 1999 in one other case whereas the Bhadohi cops had been battling allegations of killing three kids who had no hyperlinks with him.
According to Singh’s aides, he befriended Jaunpur bahubali Vinod Nate, guru of slain gangster Munna Bajrangi, who was getting ready to battle elections from Jaunpur’s Rari (now Malhani) meeting constituency.
However, Nate’s loss of life in a highway accident earlier than the 2002 UP meeting elections gave Dhananjay an opportunity to debut into the political enviornment and he fought the election as an unbiased candidate, garnering sympathy votes by inserting deceased Nate’s {photograph} near his chest whereas canvassing.
He subsequently joined the JD(U) and have become the social gathering’s face in east UP and went on to win one other meeting election from Rari in 2007, however this time on a JD(U) ticket.
His meteoric rise in politics got here when he joined the BSP in 2009 and entered Parliament after defeating sitting Jaunpur MP and SP stalwart Parasnath Yadav.
That election attracted the eye of nationwide media after the physique of an Indian Justice Party candidate Bahadur Sonkar was discovered hanging from a tree and his household alleged Singh’s hand within the incident.
“When you walk the path of crime, several politicians try to use you. This is what happened in Dhananjay’s case too. He enjoyed political patronage,” mentioned Phool Chand Yadav, recounting how Singh turned a “mananiya sansad” (revered parliamentarian) from the “most wanted”.
After a chronic wrestle by Phool Chand’s household and SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav vociferously elevating the problem of the alleged pretend encounter of Om Prakash and three others by the Bhadohi police in 1998, the then Kalyan Singh authorities in 1999 ordered a probe by the prison investigation division into the case. The probe staff concluded that the encounter was pretend.
Meanwhile, Singh’s tryst with crime continued even after his ascent to political energy and a number of other instances had been lodged in opposition to him even after he turned an MP.
Two marriages that ended and a 3rd wedding ceremony in Paris
While his political profession was stuffed with controversies, Singh’s private life too remained a topic of media consideration.
In December 2006, Singh married his first spouse Meenu, who was discovered useless below suspicious circumstances simply 9 months after the marriage. While her relations claimed it was a suicide, the police had initially suspected foul play within the loss of life.
Less than two years later, Singh married Jagriti Singh, a health care provider who labored at Delhi’s RML hospital as an orthodontist. But the wedding ended on an acrimonious word.
Jagriti had contested the state meeting election in 2012 from Malhani seat as an unbiased candidate after her father-in-law Rajdeo Singh was denied a ticket by the BSP.
In 2013, Jagriti was arrested by the Delhi Police for allegedly torturing and beating her maid to loss of life whereas Singh was arrested for allegedly tampering with the CCTV footage of the incident. In 2017, the couple acquired divorced.
The similar yr, Dhananjay married Shrikala Reddy, daughter of former MLA from Telangana’s Kodad seat, Okay. Jitender Reddy, in Paris.
In July 2021, Shrikala turned the chairperson of the 83-member district panchayat of Jaunpur.
According to political analysts, Shrikala could dent a few of the vote-share of the BJP candidate if she decides to battle the Lok Sabha election from Jaunpur.
“Dhananjay does wield some influence over the Jaunpur populace but voters too have become more aware now. In case Shrikala fights the election, she may be able to take away some of the votes but that doesn’t mean that she can register a win. Had it been Dhananjay himself in the fray, he may have been able to garner more votes,” Shashikant Pandey, head of the division of political science, Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, instructed ThePrint.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
Also Read: As Mukhtar & Afzal Ansari are convicted, story of a UP energy clan & its fall from nationalism to gangsterism
