Mobilenews24x7 Bureau
Assassination of two jailed gangsters the other day has given a flash back how such elements have been done to death in Uttar Pradesh and more so, after the ascendancy of Yogi to power.
Earlier there had been instances of redoubtable encounters killing decoits but the recent one that Atiq and Ashraf in all glare of security and media has raised many questions.
It may be interesting to compare the current scenario in Uttar Pradesh to four decades ago when dacoits and police encounters had also raised a furore in the state.
A national English magazine had a number of 183 killed in police encounters while  sources point at about1480 decoits killed in lock ups in last six years.
Then CM VPSingh was praised by the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi herself for his crusade against the badlands of the state goaded by the massacre of his own caste brethren Thakurs by bandit queen Phoolan Devi, a lower caste Nishad. Unfortunately for him, it all horribly misfired.
In 1995, when Mulayam Singh Yadav was chief minister he dropped all charges against the infamous Phoolan Devi and inducted her into his Samajwadi Party and she was elected twice in succession to Parliament, although mysteriously assassinated in 2001 in front of her Delhi residence.
From then on, most political parties and their leaders in the state developed mutually beneficial relations with dacoits or as they were locally called ‘bahibalis’ both for financial benefits and the influence they had among sections of the electorate depending on their caste.
