Was crime lord Kala main reason for Kairana’s ‘exodus’?

MEERUT/KAIRANA: The debate on whether the alleged “Hindu exodus” in Kairana was due to religious persecution or not rages on, but what most people seem to be in agreement about is the deterioration of law and order here. And the sole person credited with whipping up such a frenzy of fear is a 25-year-old who goes by the name of Mukeem Kala, a local boy who rose from being a manual labourer to a dreaded gangster in just six years.
Born in Jahanpura village near Kairana, Kala committed his first recorded crime in 2010 at the age of 19 in Panipat. “He grew up in a poor family. His father used to smuggle countrymade weapons for a living. In 2010, Kala was working as a labourer in a Panipat house. He robbed the owner of Rs 18 lakh and got caught,” said a resident of Jahanpura on the condition of anonymity.

The robbery landed Kala in Haryana’s Karnal jail, where he met infamous gangster Mustafa Kagga. Impressed by the young man’s grit, Kagga inducted him into his interstate gang. “In a very short span of time, he grew to become Kagga’s second-in-command,” the local resident, a lawyer, said.

In December 2011, Kagga was killed in a police encounter and Kala took over the reins of the gang. Kairana became the gang’s headquarters and they operated across three states – UP, Uttarakhand and Haryana.

Shamli SP Vijay Bhushan told, “The Mukeem Kala gang had become very notorious. In just three years, he had over 30 criminal cases lodged against him. These included dacoity, murder and extortion. He was not only operating in Kairana but in other areas such as Panipat, Karnal, Dehradun, Muzaffarnagar, Saharanpur, Meerut and Jaipur. He was trying to strike fear into the hearts of the people. The Shamli police took this very seriously and neutralised the gang completely. Today, the terror of Mukeem Kala has come to an end.”

But not many in Kairana are convinced it has. Most of the fact-finding teams, whether they were of the BJP, the opposition parties or even a group led by Hindu seers, have been told by local residents about Kala, his goons and the extortion. A BJP MP even put that on record in his report.

In 2014, Kala was sent to jail but many say he was running his criminal empire from inside prison, forcing police to shift him to Maharajganj jail in eastern UP. For traders in the city, Kala’s stint in jail has offered them little reassurance. Mukesh Garg, for one, is still mourning the murder of his two brothers at his establishment dealing in iron rods.

“Five men had barged into our shop in Kairana on November 30, 2013,” Garg said. “They demanded Rs 10 lakh as extortion money. We refused and informed the police. However, the police did little to nab the culprits. On August 24, 2014, a couple of men entered our premises and pumped bullets into my two brothers. I left the town and resettled in Muzaffarnagar. My frail father still sits at the shop but the business has almost died. There have been other victims too.” Rakesh Saini, a restaurant owner, said there would often be tiffs over payment of bills.

“Every time it happened, I took the matter to the police station. However, the police would ask us to compromise and at times I was even asked to apologise. It seemed as if the police were given instructions not to act against the gangsters. I soon realised that there was no point in suffering the humiliation, so I moved to Haridwar in 2014,” he said. Bhusan, though, insists the people needn’t fear the gangster anymore. “The last major extortion-related murder happened in 2014, after which we booked the accused under National Security Act (NSA). The Mukeem Kala gang was the one major gang operating out of Kairana. It had a total of 29 active members. Of these, four were killed in a police encounter and the rest, including Kala, are in jail,” the officer said.