The body of Dadua in Chitrakoot on Sunday. (PTI)

Lucknow, July 22: Mayavati’s police this morning killed Chambal’s last star bandit who had backed the Samajwadi Party in the April-May state elections, ending a three-decade reign of terror over more than half a dozen districts.

With the encounter death of 61-year-old Dadua in the Chitrakoot forests — following those of Rambabu Gadaria, Jagjivan Parihar and Nirbhay Gujjar in the past one year — all the leading gangs of Chambal have been busted, police sources said.

“All the big names are finished. Their associates and smaller gangs will take time to come up,” a Madhya Pradesh police officer said.

Dadua alias Shiv Kumar Patel was known to be as cruel as any of the ravines’ other leading dacoits. In the swathes he ruled on both sides of the Uttar Pradesh-Madhya Pradesh border, he punished defiance by gouging out eyes. Before the last polls, he threatened to chop off villagers’ fingers if they didn’t vote for his candidate.

“His sway extended to almost all the constituencies across the 400km stretch from Lalitpur to Chitrakoot. His support was crucial in at least 21 seats,” an officer said in Lucknow.

“Dadua’s word was law and people voted for the candidates he supported. So political parties dared not rub him the wrong way,” said a social worker in Chitrakoot. “The changed political equation brought the end of this dreaded bandit.”

Their support to Dadua could now come back to haunt Samajwadi leaders. Other than the bandit’s arsenal of sophisticated weapons, the police have seized his diary, which reportedly contains the names of politicians, contractors and police officers he was in touch with.

The bandit, who switched his political loyalties several times, had come very close to the Samajwadi Party in recent years. His brother Bal Kumar had contested the Assembly polls on a Samajwadi ticket but lost because he chose a constituency in Pratapgarh, outside Dadua’s zone of influence.

“We have seized a diary containing the names of Dadua’s contacts, many of whom are politicians. We are trying to decode the names,” said J.N. Chamber, principal secretary, state home department. “The diary may turn out to be explosive.”

A former Uttar Pradesh home secretary said Dadua had earlier courted the Congress and then the Bahujan Samaj Party, which he had backed in the 2002 elections.

North’s Veerappan

Yet, when the brigand with Rs 5 lakh on his head fell with 10 gang members after an 18-hour encounter 350km from Lucknow, officers couldn’t be immediately sure they had got their man.

The police files had 240 cases of murder, torture and kidnapping against Dadua —but a single, faded photograph from 1975 of a young man who had just taken his first step in crime by stealing a cow.

It was left for villagers at Jhalmal-Elha to identify the body of the man who had ruled the ravines and forests with a mixture of fear and love, and whom many among his Kurmi kinsmen hailed as a modern-day Robin Hood.

In elusiveness, however, he was closer to Veerappan. The local support for him and political patronage had defeated every earlier police hunt.

During the encounter, which began yesterday afternoon, Dadua changed his hideout five times.

“We got him only thanks to a smart intelligence network,” Amitabh Yash, senior superintendent of police, told The Telegraph from Chitrakoot. “Every time he shifted, our informers tracked him down.”

He added that for the first time in the state of Phoolan Devi and Nirbhay, the police had needed grenades to battle a bandit.

State police chief Vikram Singh said: “Even the dacoits had hurled grenades. They had other sophisticated weapons, too.”

Dadua’s empire was worth Rs 30 crore, built with the “cut” he received from every contract in the border districts — such as Rewa and Satna in Madhya Pradesh and Chitrakoot, Banda and Mahoba in Uttar Pradesh. The chief source of his income was the forest contracts on tendu leaves.

Recently, he appears to have been eyeing a direct entry into politics. His son Veer Singh became a panchayat pradhan and brother-in-law Phool Chandra Patel a block pramukh after last year’s rural polls.

His brother Bal Kumar, Dadua’s link to the Samajwadi Party, owns three sprawling bungalows in Rae Bareli’s Indira Nagar and Canal Road localities, the police said. He is also believed to be the owner of two brick kilns. The police suspect that Dadua’s money has been invested in properties in Rae Bareli.

Villagers weren’t sure the bandit’s death would bring back the rule of law. “Now Thokia, another dacoit, will try to fill the space,” said Devbhuti Kushwaha, the pradhan of Itawa near Chitrakoot.