Murder in the Bylanes: Life and Death in a Divided City

By Aloke Lal and Maanas Lal

"UNPUTDOWNABLE" - Tehelka

Keeping the peace in a time of chaos

Uttar Pradesh in the aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition was a state on edge. When Aloke Lal took over as the Deputy Inspector General of Kanpur, the congratulations came with a warning-to move with caution as Kanpur was then the most volatile city in north India. In Murder in the Bylanes, Lal recounts his time policing a city on the brink of riots, particularly after the violent killing of the prominent local politician and slumlord Munna Sonkar aka 'Kala Bachcha'. Seen as both a bulwark for Hindus against Muslims and a saviour of several of his Muslim tenants, he was a study in contradiction, and his murder was seen as the last straw by both communities.

Murder in the Bylanes is a gripping account of how a demoralised and broken police force, reduced to being a bystander in pockets where criminals controlled localities, was asked to maintain order. It is also a reminder of how communal disharmony can tear apart our social fabric.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Feb 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9789354352553

Book preview

1

Ganga–Jamuna

Amongst the most sacred locations in the Hindu thought process are the prayags, the point where rivers converge. The river Bhagirathi meets the river Alaknanda in Devprayag and assumes the identity of one of the greatest rivers on the planet—the Ganga (or the Ganges).

Legend has it that Ganga came down to earth from the heavens when King Bhagirath of the Ikshvaku dynasty went into penance of a thousand years after handing over the reins of power to his minister. This voluntary penance involved living in inhospitable higher reaches of snow-covered peaks of the great mountain of the Himalayas (which translates to ‘home of the snow’) and surviving only on fruits, roots and water. The penance pleased the great river Ganga which assumed a material form, and manifested to the king her divine self.

She asked Bhagirath what he wished for. Bhagirath told her the sad story of his forefathers, 60,000 of whom had perished after being cursed by one Kapila. As a consequence, they had not attained moksha or freedom from worldly ties. It was possible to bring true peace to their troubled souls by sprinkling the holy waters of the Ganga. Ganga agreed to descend on land, but she warned him that the land would not have the capacity to withstand the massive volume and the immeasurable thud that her landing would entail. She advised Bhagirath: ‘O protector of men! In the three worlds, there exists none who is able to sustain the same, except Shiva, the God of the gods, the one with the sable throat.’ She advised Bhagirath to observe austerities and invoke the giver of boons, Lord Shiva, to contain her great landing in his dreadlocks. The myth goes on to tell us how the King meditated standing on one leg, making his penance even more trying, to please Shiva. The long years of severe penance and dedicated prayer finally bore fruit, and Ganga landed in the humongous locks of the Lord. A stream of water fell from his locks to the rugged heights of the mighty Himalayas, which flow down today as the river Bhagirathi.

Earth scientists present the story behind the river Bhagirathi as a far less dramatic and mundane happening; the Gangotri glacier melts in the great heights of the mighty mountain. The force of gravity makes the water flow from Gomukh, the pout of the glacier, down the slopes, where the topography of the land makes it assume the shape of a robust stream. This stream then meets the river Alaknanda at Devprayag to emerge as the river Ganga.

Ganga flows south-eastward into the plains to form a great alluvial plain—the Indo-Gangetic plain. After flowing many miles eastwards, it meets the river Jamuna (or Yamuna) at Prayagraj to form the famed sangam, the great confluence. The name Prayagraj itself is a portmanteau with ‘Prayag’ meaning ‘confluence of two or more rivers’ and ‘raj’ meaning ‘king’. The historic city of Allahabad, recently renamed Prayagraj, is where the two important rivers, Ganga and Yamuna, meet. It is a major pilgrim centre for the Hindus. Yamuna loses its identity hereon and the merged river flows further east to finally meet the Bay of Bengal.

The culture (tehzeeb) that has evolved in the Great Plains is called Ganga–Jamuni Tehzeeb. The idea of the two rivers joining to form one great entity, Ganga, symbolises two disparate cultures coming together to form a seamless single culture that draws richly from both traditional Hindu and Islamic influences. The result is a vibrant, multidimensional, peerless and syncretic culture. People from different religions share elements and ideologies to bring together all aspects of life to prosper, making society a bouquet of many hues and fragrances. The leitmotif of this culture is pluralism.

The waters of the two rivers merge to symbolise that people of different beliefs can have the same affinity with the life-giving nectar that flows in these streams. The Ganga is not owned by one religious community. It is for everyone. It gives life to all. In other words, the Ganga–Jamuni Tehzeeb, symbolised by the great life-giver, the Ganga, is the true representation of the culture and the idea of India. As Shashi Tharoor puts it: ‘It is the idea of an ever-ever land—emerging from an ancient civilization, united by a shared history, sustained by pluralist democracy. India’s democracy imposes no narrow conformities on its citizens.’

Uttar Pradesh has given us some great intellectual and artistic giants. Hindi poets like Tulsidas, Surdas and Kabir, Urdu poetry giants like Ghalib, Majaz and Firaq, writers Prem Chand and Sachchidananda Hirananda Vatsyayan ‘Agyeya’, music legends Bismilla Khan, Ravi Shankar and Zakir Husain, dance exponents Birju Maharaj and Shambhu Maharaj, painters Sukumar Bose and Eric Hubert Bowen, and the famous theatre and film actor Naseeruddin Shah are just a few names out of the hundreds who have grown out of the fertile cultural soil of the province. They come from different backgrounds, lifestyles and religious leanings. To say that Uttar Pradesh represents the idea of India will not be an overstatement. It is not easy to be able to put in a few words the whole idea of India, a thought that Tharoor echoes:

Just thinking about India makes clear the immensity of the challenge of defining what the idea of India means. How can one approach this land of snow peaks and tropical jungles, with twenty-three major languages and 22,000 distinct ‘dialects’…, inhabited in the second decade of the twenty-first century by more than a billion individuals of every ethnic extraction known to humanity?

It is believed that the highly fertile alluvial soil that the plains adjacent to the Ganga offered attracted Raja Kanh Deo of the Kanhpuria clan to establish the village of Kanhpur in 1207. It was later called Cawnpore by the British, and subsequently came to be known as Kanpur. This region represents some of the finest aspects of the Ganga–Jamuni Tehzeeb, and was recognised by the British for its immense industrial potential. They deserve the credit for having brought prosperity to the village by establishing cloth mills, which led to it being called the ‘Manchester of the East’. They were also responsible for shaping the leather and tannery industry there. Ironically, it was Kanpur that witnessed some of the most violent incidents during India’s First War of Independence in 1857, in which hundreds of English colonial inhabitants were massacred by the rebel soldiers participating in the uprising. During the reprisals, the British troops not only inflicted unspeakable atrocities on the rebels, but also worked to drive a wedge between the Hindus and the Muslims who had mounted the rebellion as a united front. Today, the metropolitan area of the sprawling city ranks among the ten most populous cities of India, with an estimated population of over three million. A mass of people still carry the baggage of a bloodstained past.

2

A City on Fire

I was posted in Kanpur as Deputy Inspector General (DIG) in 1993—a campus which in the early years of my service evoked awe was now my next post of duty. I had first come to this campus as an Assistant Superintendent of Police under training in 1977. It was the day of the festival of colours, Holi. Kanpur celebrates this festival like no other city does. The celebrations last for a week. And what is thrown around can be called ‘colour’ only very loosely, for it includes everything from slush to filth.

I’d been nervous while entering what I considered haloed precincts, but had been given a warm reception. I had been served gujiya, papri and kanji. Kanpur had been largely peaceful during that time.

At the beginning of 1993, times were different. Babri Masjid had been demolished. The Hindu–Muslim fabric was in shreds. The country was sitting on a pile of explosives with a short fuse. When I got the orders to take over as the DIG of the Kanpur Range, a senior colleague cautioned me. ‘Aloke,’ he said, ‘while you have been assigned one of the most coveted jobs within the Uttar Pradesh Police, you must not forget that Kanpur currently is the most volatile city in the whole of north India. I know you have often been sent to man assignments of this nature in the past and you have controlled communal situations very well, but believe me, this is not going to be easy. All the best!’ This call was a warning. Kanpur had a population of nearly two million. One in five was Muslim. The population density was over 2,200 persons per square kilometre. The post–Babri Masjid scenario was a far cry from the earlier times. Now there were areas that had become strongholds of one or the other community. Ghettos were under the protection of leading criminals and the police had been rendered largely reactive.

‘Tham! Kaun ataa hai? (Stop! Who goes there?)’ The armed sentry dressed in battle gear with a menacing bayoneted rifle pointed right in our direction shouts at the top of his frightening voice as we turn into the compound of the DIG’s residence. I had my family with me. We were moving in that day. My then three-year-old Maanas, now my co-author, was fear-stricken. Following the standard protocol, the driver responded matter-of-factly, ‘Dost (friend)’ followed by the reassuring response, ‘Chalo dost, koi baat nahin! (Never mind, friend. Go ahead.)’ The sentry assumed the attention position and said loudly, ‘Jai Hind, sir.’

The car drove past the sentry to reach the entrance of our new home. The three-year-old was still in shock. ‘Mom! Don’t get down. That man with the big gun is going to kill us!’ He turned to me to complain, ‘And you, Dad, how heartless you are! Someone was about to kill your only child and you did nothing to protect him?’ We started to laugh. Maanas did not take our reaction well, looking bewildered and offended. I hugged him and assured him that it was just a routine. I told him that whenever anyone enters our protected compound in darkness, the sentry will challenge the person in the manner he did a little while ago. I further explained to him that the sentry was actually our friend, not an enemy. I took him to the sentry to introduce them. The two shook hands and a new friendship was forged.

The same evening, I felt the thrill of standing next