Brijesh Singh, the dreaded eastern UP gangster wanted in several cases of murder and extortion in Delhi, has been charged under the stringent Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) by the Special Cell of Delhi Police.
Singh, once considered a prized sharp shooter of Dawood Ibrahim, is involved in at least 23 cases of murders and kidnapping among other serious crimes.
The decision to invoke MCOCA came after a city court allowed the police's plea to book him under this charge so as to bust the organised syndicate being run by him. Police said the MCOCA charges have also been slapped against at least 15 relatives of Singh. In 2002, then Chief Minister Mayawati had alleged that Brijesh was involved in a plot to kill her. There are over 100 criminal cases against Brijesh Singh in various States. He is also the prime accused in the infamous 1992 JJ Hospital shoot-out case in Mumbai.
The sleuths of Special Cell worked for almost two years to trace his whereabouts. A senior police official said several teams traveled extensively in UP, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Orissa and Mumbai on his trail.
In 2008, a team of officers from special cell nabbed Singh in Bhubaneswar. Brijesh had been evading arrest for the past 20 years, forcing the UP police to increase the reward money for his arrest from Rs 2 lakh to Rs 5 lakh in 2007. He had never been arrested after escaping from a jail in 1986. When he was arrest, it was emerged that he was living under a fake identity of Arun Kumar Singh in Bhubaneswar.
Singh, a resident of Dharaura in Ghazipur, is said to have entered the world of crime to avenge the murder of his father Ravindernath Singh in Ghazipur in the early 1980s. At that time he was pursuing his graduation in a college in Varanasi. His entry into crime was marked by the killing of two persons to avenge his father's murder. This was followed by a spate of killings in Uttar Pradesh, making him one of the most dreaded gangsters of all times. He continually fought a supremacy battle with rival Independent MlA from Mau, Mukhtar Ansari. The don was once a close friend of Ansari, before the two became sworn enemies due to rivalry over railway and coal contracts. Ansari is at present lodged in the Ghazipur jail for the murder of BJP MlA Krishnanand Rai. The slain MlA was said to be close to Brijesh.
