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Akku Yadav was a violent and relentless gangster who terrorized the Kasturba Nagar slum for 13 years with the blessing of local authorities. In 2004, people had suffered enough and an angry mob brought his life to a horrific end just like he did with so many innocent victims.
Mob Justice, lunch mob, vigilante justice whatever you may call it, these extra judiciary forms of retaliation are seen often in India when law & order fails the people & they are forced to take action themselves.
Akku Yadav was a violent and relentless gangster who terrorized the Kasturba Nagar slum for 13 years with the blessing of local authorities. In 2004, people had suffered enough and an angry mob brought his life to a horrific end just like he did with so many innocent victims.
Source: Wikipedia,
theGuardian https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/sep/16/india.gender
Documentary - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3XPHUQXPcU
Report - https://humanrightsinitiative.org/publications/police/killing_justice_vigilantism_in_nagpur1.pdf
Bollywood Corner:
Reddit link : https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueCrime/comments/o1a12h/lynch_mob_akku_yadav_a_relentless_violent/?
In 2004, few children played outside in the narrow lanes of the Kasturba Nagar slum just outside Nagpur city, India. You wouldn’t see people gathered chatting or talking to each other. It was an eerie neighborhood. Silent and stoic. There was a fear among the 300 odd families who lived in the Kasturba Nagar Slum. The fear of being targeted by the local Gangster Bharat Kaalicharan aka Akku Yadav.
Most of the people who lived there worked odd jobs, were daily laborer’s, domestic servants and such, uneducated and without much prospect beyond the low income or poverty they lived in.
Kaalicharan was born and brought up in that very slum but there was a marked difference between him and the people who feared him the most. Kaalicharan was a Yadav caste while the majority of the other residents were of the lowest castes in Hindu Society, those that would have at one time been considered untouchable. In India Untouchable has a literal connotation, one who must never be touched by other castes above them as they were considered sub human owing to the nature of the work their communities were made to undertake. It is a terrible indignity of labor & a system of oppression perpetrated for generations.
Since the early 90’s Akku Yadav the son of a Milkman had slowly risen to the top of a Gang in Kasturba Nagar. His henchmen would rob, kidnap, torture & rape people in and around the slum. They would also extort money from small businesses every week as their main source of income. If they resisted or refused, he would threaten the women in their family with rape. Sexual Assault was his weapon of choice owing to the stigma associated with it for victims in India.
They also undertook rioting and mob violence contracts from politicians to disrupt elections for rival parties. This ensured Akku & his gang had full impunity to reign over Kasturba Nagar by the blessings of these corrupt politicians & the local police who would ignore his victims’ pleas and instead report back to Akku about them, he would then retaliate with even more violence.
Despite having almost 24 cases of various crimes registered against him he seemed to rule the roost with no consequences besides maybe a few months of jail time on & off. He would get bail for every single offence he was charged with including gang rape.
The Murders:
TW: These descriptions of violence are graphic in nature.
One of the victims he killed out in the open was Asha Bai. When Asha’s family was eating dinner, they heard a knock on the door and someone identified himself as a friend of her son. When she went to open the door, she was viciously yanked outside and then stabbed by Bharat Kaalicharan aka Akku Yadav. Like a psychopath devoid of any emotion, he then cut off Asha Bai’s ears so he could take her earrings and then her fingers because he couldn’t get her rings off.
Asho Bhagat was brutally tortured in front of her daughter and some neighbors for hours by Kaalicharan & his men. He cut off her breasts and then sliced her to pieces on the street.
Avinash Tiwari, a well-meaning neighbor was horrified by what he saw was determined to report Asho Bhagat’s murder. But when news of his intentions reached the devil of Kasturba Nagar, he too was hacked to death promptly.
A woman named Kalma had just given birth not more than 10 days ago when she was raped by this gang. Unable to reconcile with what had happened to her Kalma set herself on fire and died.
Another victim was 7 months pregnant when Kaalicharan & his men dragged her on the street, stripped her & then sexually assaulted her in front of everyone.
This siege in Kasturba Nagar was never going to end. Kaalicharan had the slum in his grip and the law enforcement by their nuts as well. No one on the outside of this eco system knew nor cared.
A spark which ignited the flame of retribution:
In the darkness that swallowed this little neighborhood there was a ray of light in the form of 25-year-old Usha Narayane & her Brother-in-Law Vilas Bhande who is a lawyer. Unlike most of the women in her community at Kasturba Nagar, Usha was educated and held much promise to rise above the poverty she was born in.
On 4th August Vilas Bhande held a press conference and aired the dirty deeds of Bharat Kaalicharan for the world to see. He expressed his frustration in getting justice and that the people had had enough bloodshed for the past decade.
Vilas then organized a mass complaint signed by 96 residents attesting that the legally externed Kaalicharan Yadav had been living in their basti for the past decade operating freely as a gangster and that he had not been caught by LE despite being reported on repeatedly. This mass complaint could no longer be ignored.
As expected, Kaalicharan was intimated by his close pals at the Police Station and he showed up with 40 men outside Usha’s home threatening to throw acid in her face & gang rape her if she & her Brother-in-Law didn’t take back the police report.
Usha stood her ground no less than a brave warrior staring death in the face. She loosened the valve on a tank of pressurized natural gas and lit a match, she declared to Kaalicharan, "if you come any closer, I will light this and then we all die!" The spineless cowards ran with their tails tucked between their legs. What a victory!
News of this heroic encounter spread in the community and ignited a flame in the hearts of Kasturba Nagar and the mob burned the homes of Akku & his accomplices.
Fearing the wrath of the public this former gangster & his goonies fled to find shelter by surrendering to the police so that they may imprison him for any of the many, many active warrants against him.
The Demon is slayed:
On August 13th 2004, Kaalicharan and 3 accomplices were led by 3 constables to the court for get a Bail hearing. The public was enraged, they had lost all faith in the justice system, having seen this man come out on bail on such serious charges time & time again. And now word on the street was that he would yet again rise like a snake.
As he walked past them in a drunken stupor btw, he spotted a woman he had raped and called her out with a curse word. Then him & the cops around him laughed as if that were a hilarious joke.
The woman threw her sandal on Kaalicharan’s face & screamed out “If you come out there can only be one of us alive on this Earth, you or me!”
Before they knew what was happening, the mob of anywhere between 50 & 100 rushed into the court room. They took out little packets of red chili powder which they threw into the faces of the cops and the criminals. They threw rocks at them and picked up whatever they found in the room to beat them.
The 3 constables and few court officials ran for their lives escaping just in the nick of time.
Then one by one the women took turns and stabbed Kaalicharan a total of 73 times. The Grand finale was rather brutal but very much on theme with the kind of violence this man once perpetrated. A woman took the knife and hacked off Kaalicharan’s penis, the weapon with which he had destroyed many lives in Kasturba Nagar.
The once invincible & all mighty powerful gangster, bastion of toxic male aggression now lay bloodied, tattered and barely recognizable as human.
The women returned home and played loud music and everyone danced on the streets with joy. They had done what they had to do in the absence of any action from those in charge of law & order.
Around 20 people were arrested for this murder including relatives of the murder victims and Usha Narayane as well. After months of public protest, they were finally let out on bail and not enough conclusive evidence was found to prosecute them.
Nagpur had at that time a spate of Mob Justice events in the years preceding Akku's murder. Several such local gangsters were burned to death by angry mobs. If anything, this shows the ineffectiveness of the police force at that time.
Akku had slowly destroyed the morale & peace of Kasturba Nagar, a sort of death by a 1000 cuts and in the end the residents did the same to him. Were they justified in this heinous murder? It's nearly impossible to find them at fault.
