The guns and the ammunition that felled two police officers, besides at least eight to ten of lower ranks, in Mathura’s Jawahar Bagh neighbourhood adjacent to the police lines are suspected to have been smuggled into the sprawling 250 acres compound over which the Swadheen Bharat Subhash Sena (SBSS) had encroached upon, from eastern UP and bordering Bihar districts where illegal arms manufacturing units thrive.
Mathura district police are chary to admit this, but state intelligence sources said that the UP police was aware that weapons had been stockpiled in the massive complex. The Director-General of Police, Javed Ahmed, admitted to this in a press conference, saying that while his force was aware that guns and ammunition had been smuggled in, they were not prepared for the grisly outcome.
A Mathura police sub-inspector OP Singh, who was on duty at Jawahar Bagh after a gun battle between the police and the SBSS left 24 people dead, told The Quint without batting an eyelid that “regardless of what senior officers are now saying, there was an intelligence failure.”
However, the question that is being asked among officers in the administration and shell-shocked people in Mathura is how such a huge cache of weapons could be smuggled in without the police administration not being any wiser. Intelligence sources said that while it was unlikely that the state police were not aware of the stockpiling of weapons, no proactive steps were taken to seize the guns because of the perception that the SBSS had links with the Samajwadi Party.
The Samajwadi Party Link
It is an open secret that the SP’s Shivpal Yadav, younger brother of party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav, had links with the SBSS. But sources said it could also be that the SBSS had perhaps been recently won over by the BJP.
The weapons, intelligence sources in Delhi said, were clandestinely brought over to the Jawahar Bagh base of the SBSS, which is being described as a cult, in ones and twos in cars run by the organisation, a splinter group of the Jai Gurudev sect which has its sprawling headquarters, marked by a massive shrine built with marble, on the Mathura-Agra highway.
The SBSS leader, Rambaresh Yadav, originally hails from near Balia in eastern UP. Rambaresh, against whom at least 10 criminal cases remain pending in police stations in districts bordering Bihar, is suspected to have used his contacts among men who manufacture and operate illegal weapons manufacturing units along the UP-Bihar border to procure the arms and ammunition over the past two-and-a-half years since his band of desperadoes occupied Jawahar Bagh.
Collusion between Cops and Politicians
Rambaresh parted ways with the Jai Gurudev sect two-and-a-half years after its founder, Tulsidas Maharaj, died in 2012 supposedly at the age of 116. Tulsidas’ death triggered the break-up of his organisation into three splinter groups. While the Tiwari and Pankaj groups moved on, Rambaresh founded his band of followers comprising largely of Yadavs as also some men and women from other backward castes (OBCs).
Christened the SBSS (or alternately Netaji Sena), Rambaresh’s group settled at Jawahar Bagh near the police lines. Although the followers lived in tents, the group was able to procure ration cards for most members. The ration cards helped them get cooking gas connections. The walls of public and private buildings around Jawahar Bagh proclaim the Netaji Sena’s militant slogans and programmes.
While the state police have set free most of Rambaresh’s ragtag followers, save about 350-odd who have been booked for opening fire on a police party that wanted to evict them from Jawahar Bagh, the group leader was able to escape. The police’s action in setting free the SBSS followers has more to do with politics.
Over a period of time, certainly from at least the late 80s, the Jai Gurudev sect, had built a formidable following among UPs lower castes and enjoyed the patronage of the SP. Hundreds of men and women, describing themselves as devotees of Jai Gurudev, live at the sprawling ashram. They perform “seva” by contributing labour in upcoming buildings, gardens, the kitchen and the like.
“I have been Jai Gurudev’s follower since 1989,” said Narendra Kumar who takes pride in describing himself as an “OBC”. Kumar and a fellow devotee, Bhole Nath, who said he is a harijan, belong to Salwankshetra village in Raebareli, have been offering their labour to different tasks at the ashram. The Jai Gurudev sect has several massive properties, including petrol and diesel filling station, in and around Mathura.
Mobilisation of Lower Castes
Once they join the Jai Gurudev order, the followers are instructed to give up non-vegetarian food for “shakahari bhojan”. They do not worship any idol other than that of Tulsidas Maharaj whose giant-size portraits and statuettes adorn the entire ashram. Men and women meditate in a massive basement chamber under the main structure whose domes resemble those atop mosques.
It is a shared sense of brotherhood and social dignity, respectability and recognition that they enjoy that has brought hundreds of thousands of UP’s lowest castes to embrace the Jai Gurudev sect. All male followers wear a white vest that emblazoned with vows – embroidered with colourful threads – of vegetarianism and voluntary labour.
Ram Paras, who admitted that he is a chamar, hails from Sravasti district, and has been living at the ashram for close to five months. He works in one of the front lawns. Back in his village he runs a small kirana store but the ashram is a place where he “escapes to to seek peace and spirituality.”
While Ram Paras shied away from admitting who he will vote for when UP goes to the polls next year, Uma Bharati, from distant Gorakhpur, was nonchalant. “Mulayam ko hi denge (Mulayam will get the vote),” she said in her distinct Gorakhpuri dialect. Uma is single and works in the ashram kitchen while also helping other womenfolk to clean the floors of the so-called sanctum sanctorum. She, like others, are at the ashram to “not just escape the shame” of being “looked down upon” back in Gorakhpur, but also to find a sense of purpose by way of contributing labour.
Also read: Behind the Mathura Violence: ‘Netaji’ Groups and a Vegetarian Baba
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