Akhilesh Singh, 39, the gangster arrested from a Gurgaon guesthouse by a joint Jharkhand-Haryana police team last week, was a fugitive with a reward of Rs 5 lakh on his head, a reputation for jumping bail several times, and 55 cases in a crime record spanning nearly two decades. The younger of a policeman’s two sons —brother Amlesh was arrested earlier —Akhilesh had started out as a businessman, as a transporter in Jamshedpur in partnership with one Vikram Sharma (later his associate in alleged crime). His father, Chandra Gupta Singh, general secretary of Jharkhand Policemen’s Association before he retired in 2012, accuses some police officers of implicating him in cases that “ruined Akhilesh’s life”. Police, on the other hand, allege that contacts in the force, besides constant change of address, had helped Akhilesh keep evading arrest for so long. The police have seized property documents worth several crores in Dehradun, Noida, Gurgaon and Jabalpur. “We are in the processing of identifying them before proceeding legally to confiscate them,” SP (City, Jamshedpur) Prashant Anand. The first major crime in which Akhilesh’s name came up was the kidnapping of lubricants dealer Om Prakash Sharma on July 21, 2001. Amid outrage by the business community, he surrendered before a court on August 6, 2001, and Kabra was released. “Akhilesh was just a child,” said Chandra Gupta, 66, now central secretary of All Jharkhand Students’ Union (AJSU), a partner in the BJP-led government. “There were some officials who were angry with me, as I had stood up to them as general secretary of the policemen’s association, when I was posted in Palamu. They got an opportunity and implicated my son. And once he was inside, there were people who told him that he was now a branded criminal and would remain in jail forever. He fled.” Following his escape on February 18, 2002, Akhilesh was accused in two murders that year. One was that of Kabra, killed in November 2002. Within a month of his escape, Sakchi sub-divisional jail officer Uma Shankar Pandey was murdered outside his house; the motive ascribed to Akhilesh was torture he had allegedly faced in jail. By the time Akhilesh was arrested from Varanasi on October 7, 2004, he had also earned a reputation as an alleged extortionist targeting scrap dealers in the Steel City, and businessmen. Released on bail on September 2, 2007, after his mother fell ill, he jumped bail. Over the next few years, he became a prime suspect in a series of crimes, including the murder of footwear brand owner Ashish De in Jamshedpur in November 2007; firing on former judge R P Ravi in March 2008, and the murders of Tata Steel security officer Jairam Singh, Akhilesh’s former aide Paramjeet Singh and transporter Ashok Sharma. Akhilesh was next arrested by the Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force and the Jharkhand police on December 31, 2011, from a mall in Noida. In 2014 reports started to surface, apparently spread by his aides, that he would be joining politics. When the police shifted him from Sakchi jail to Dumka jail, however, the plan was reportedly shelved. In May 2015, Akhilesh was convicted in the murder of Pandey, the jailor. However, on September 4, 2015, he got bail. Although he had been booked under the Crime Control Act under which no bail application could be entertained for one year, he earned a stay from the Jharkhand High Court, and then got bail from the high court, pending appeal against his conviction. Coming out of jail, he once again jumped bail. Back-to-back murders in 2016 brought the spotlight back on him. On November 30 that year, his alleged associates killed Upendra Singh, a former gangster and rival who had joined the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha. This happened in the busy Bar Association hall on the court premises in Sakchi. On December 6, 2016, Upendra’s aide Amit Rai was murdered in his house. While four persons were arrested, Akhilesh was alleged to be behind both murders, the motive linked to the extortion business. The police set out on a hunt in several states — UP, MP, Uttarakhand and Odisha — but he escaped a couple of times. “We had carried out a raid in Jabalpur (Madhya Pradesh), but he gave us the slip. We came to know later that he had been informed in advance. We are proceeding further to identify such persons [informants],” said Anand, the Jamshedpur City SP. His team carried out raids in Varanasi and other places this year got property attachment orders executed in several cases. The first breakthrough came last April 4 with the arrest of associate Vikram Sharma from Dehradun. The former business partner, said to be the one who had introduced Akhilesh to crime, was wanted in the jailor’s murder and several other cases involving Akhilesh. Police say the two used fake identities a they moved from place to place. The next arrest was of Amlesh Singh, Akhilesh’s brother, from Bhubaneshwar Airport with the help of Odisha police on September 8. Amlesh is co-accused with Akhilesh in many cases. In Gurgaon, Akhilesh had checked in as Abhay Singh in the guesthouse in Sector 29 the very day he would be arrested. He had come from Jaipur and was with his wife, Garima Singh, whom he had married three years ago. Anand described the way Akhilesh allegedly ran his extortion business: “His cut from scrap dealers was fixed. He ensured nobody could reach him unless he wanted them to. There were a few occasions when we picked up his men in Jamshedpur but realised they knew nothing beyond the fact that they had to carry out a certain task.” Akhilesh’s father accused police of acting with malice against his family: “They got people to fire on my house on September 9 this year [an FIR against unidentified persons has been registered]. Whenever something happens, they register a case in my son’s name. They have attached my property so many times,” he said, alleging that this was for having stood up to officials when he was the general secretary of the policemen’s association. The father claimed that Akhilesh, who never completed college, was kindhearted. “Not many know that he had joined the Radha Soami Sect and was its district president. What a monster they [police] have made him out to be,” he said.
