It was a late summer’s evening in Ghaziabad city. Two small cars were parked outside the Bikaner Wallah sweetshop. Sitting in one, with two friends, was Jagghu Pehlwan, wanted for more than 150 murders. In the other, five more men were drinking and talking. Watching through the heavy monsoon rain were members of the Ghaziabad police special operations group.
Inspector Anil Kaparwan, who led the group, said Pehlwan fired “two or three shots” from his Beretta pistol, but otherwise was captured without a struggle. If the charges against him are true, the man who is alleged to be India’s most notorious contract killer and one of the world’s most lethal serial murderers, was soon behind bars.
FRAMED
With his case making its slow way through India’s courts, Pehlwan gave his first interview last week, to the Guardian. Talking on a mobile phone in his cell, the 130kg prisoner claimed he had been framed and was innocent. He denied involvement in any of the key cases — mainly murders of local businessmen and politicians alleged to have been ordered by the victims’ rivals — or the secondary accusations of extortion, kidnap and gunrunning.
“These charges are all invented,” the 28-year-old said. “I have never hurt anybody, let alone murdered someone.”
However, for Kaparwan, Pehlwan is a “killing machine.”
Interviews with police and Pehlwan’s relatives have revealed that the affair is much more than a simple “true crime” story. They shed light on the appalling violence, corruption, political intrigue and poverty that occurs only a short drive from India’s capital: the dark side of the astonishing economic development of the country in recent years.
STREETFIGHTERS
Pehlwan was born in Nithora, a rough village on the outskirts of Ghaziabad, in 1983. Other than the local reputation for producing wrestlers and streetfighters, Nithora is typical of tens of thousands of other such villages across India. Buffaloes are tethered in the yard of each brick home. Water comes from a well and there are no sewers. Dusty, garbage-strewn fields are crossed by dirt roads.
Pehlwan’s father, a retired minor government clerk with a small transport business, sent his son to a good local school. However, by his teens, the boy was in trouble for brawling. Soon Pehlwan — the nickname means “wrestler” — had left school, married and joined the tens of millions of young Indian men born in rural villages who have no real qualifications or skills.
CAR THIEF
According to the police — if not his family — he soon found a way to make a living, becoming an accomplished car thief and working as a hardman for local gangsters by his early 20s.
Ghaziabad, the nearby city, is a tough place. It lies in Uttar Pradesh, the vast northern Indian state with a population of 200 million and levels of deprivation often worse than sub-Saharan Africa. Delhi, where wealth has quadrupled since the liberal economic reforms pushed through when Pehlwan was a teenager, is only 50km away.
FREE-FOR-ALL
However, with patchy rule of law, recent decades have seen a free-for-all with huge riches available to the clever, powerful, daring or brutal. Nowhere is this more true than in the frontier zone between Delhi and its poor, rural hinterland. Cities such as Ghaziabad are favorite places for Delhi-based criminals to find what they need: guns manufactured in clandestine workshops, false identities, drugs and men prepared to kill for money.
Kaparwan estimates there are more than a dozen contract killers working in Ghaziabad. They are usually hired by gangsters, businessmen and local politicians. Last month, a 45-year-old mother of six was charged with paying 100,000 rupees (US$1,947) for her abusive husband to be murdered.
“That’s around the going rate for a low-level guy,” Kaparwan said.
SATELLITE TOWNS
According to his charge sheet, obtained by the Guardian, Pehlwan’s favored places of work were the raw new satellite towns such as Gurgaon and Noida springing up around the capital. With their call centers, multinational firms, malls and metro, both epitomize the new India. So did Pehlwan’s alleged clients and victims.
Pehlwan is accused of murdering a hotel owner in Delhi’s upmarket Safdarjung Enclave in 2003. In 2008, he allegedly killed three political leaders around Ghaziabad and in Noida, close to where the Formula One track was built for last month’s Indian Grand Prix.
MANY KILLINGS
Then there was a transport contractor killed on the orders of a jailed gangster, a rival shot dead in a new private hospital and a building materials supplier murdered in the town of Sahibabad. In June in Gurgaon, home to scores of call centers and multinational businesses, Pehlwan is suspected by police of killing two gangsters in a contract taken out by a local councilor.
In recent months, Pehlwan is accused of killing a political activist and a businessman after a dispute over a deal to install cable TV locally. Before he was detained, police allege that he had been hired by a Gurgaon-based businessman to undertake five murders for a fee of about £125,000 (US$196,850).
DISCREET
However, if Pehlwan was indeed earning vast sums, he remained relatively discreet. As he moved around, he stayed with friends and associates, police said. However, there was extensive work on the family home in Nithora, a new car and expensive holidays. In recent years, Pehlwan himself boasted to the Guardian, he had flown to Indian resorts favored by the newly wealthy middle classes such as the Himalayan Kullu valley and Goa. Pehlwan also wanted to see Europe or the US, like millions of other Indians for whom overseas trips are now feasible.
“I couldn’t get a passport,” he said.
Police say Pehlwan confessed to more than 100 murders while in custody and has been charged with 31.
“He cooperated,” said Kaparwan, whose team received a 50,000 rupee reward for his arrest. “He told us everything.”
Pehlwan and his family say otherwise, denying even the charge of beating up a local official last year.
“My son went to speak to the local bureaucrats, but there was no violence. He just convinced him to connect the electricity to the village,” said Daramvir Singh, his father.
‘FAMILY MAN’
Unlike nearby villages, deprived of power by government sloth and graft, Nithora now has electricity almost round the clock. One result was the unanimous election of Pehlwan’s wife to the vacant post of village chief.
“My son got into trouble for fighting once or twice, but otherwise would not harm a mosquito,” Pehlwan’s father told the Guardian.
The alleged killer’s wife said he was “a family man” and his lawyer said the police were routinely bought off by politicians or rival gangs.
Pehlwan said the police had beaten him so badly that they fractured a bone in his leg, and fired live rounds into the floor to intimidate him. Kaparwan denies the claims, but such practices are common in India.
“I hope I will get out soon. I am praying for that, but there are so many cases against me it seems unlikely,” Pehlwan said.
LITTLE DIFFERENCE
His detention has made little difference in Ghaziabad. Kaparwan, who has served in the city for eight years, said he saw “new faces and more crime” every day. When he arrested Pehlwan, he found some teenagers with the alleged killer. It is these “youngsters” who worry him most.
“They kept saying: ‘Sorry sir,’” Kaparwan said. “I asked them why they were there. ‘Just to be with [Pehlwan],’ they said. They idolized him. We let them go.”
The past few months have seen tremendous strides in India’s journey to develop a vibrant semiconductor and electronics ecosystem. The nation’s established prowess in information technology (IT) has earned it much-needed revenue and prestige across the globe. Now, through the convergence of engineering talent, supportive government policies, an expanding market and technologically adaptive entrepreneurship, India is striving to become part of global electronics and semiconductor supply chains. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Vision of “Make in India” and “Design in India” has been the guiding force behind the government’s incentive schemes that span skilling, design, fabrication, assembly, testing and packaging, and
Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s (李顯龍) decision to step down after 19 years and hand power to his deputy, Lawrence Wong (黃循財), on May 15 was expected — though, perhaps, not so soon. Most political analysts had been eyeing an end-of-year handover, to ensure more time for Wong to study and shadow the role, ahead of general elections that must be called by November next year. Wong — who is currently both deputy prime minister and minister of finance — would need a combination of fresh ideas, wisdom and experience as he writes the nation’s next chapter. The world that
As former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) wrapped up his visit to the People’s Republic of China, he received his share of attention. Certainly, the trip must be seen within the full context of Ma’s life, that is, his eight-year presidency, the Sunflower movement and his failed Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, as well as his eight years as Taipei mayor with its posturing, accusations of money laundering, and ups and downs. Through all that, basic questions stand out: “What drives Ma? What is his end game?” Having observed and commented on Ma for decades, it is all ironically reminiscent of former US president Harry
Can US dialogue and cooperation with the communist dictatorship in Beijing help avert a Taiwan Strait crisis? Or is US President Joe Biden playing into Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) hands? With America preoccupied with the wars in Europe and the Middle East, Biden is seeking better relations with Xi’s regime. The goal is to responsibly manage US-China competition and prevent unintended conflict, thereby hoping to create greater space for the two countries to work together in areas where their interests align. The existing wars have already stretched US military resources thin, and the last thing Biden wants is yet another war.