At public meetings, he would be accompanied by a trigger-happy band of merry supporters who announced his arrival by firing a few rounds indiscriminately in the air. Raja Bhaiyya's supporters liked to describe him as a modern-day Robin Hood-born in the aristocracy, treated as an outlaw with the sobriquet ' Kunda ka goonda' given by former chief minister Kalyan Singh, and prone to giving freely to the needy. He graduated in law from Lucknow University and, in 1993, won his first MLA election.īy then, he had established his hold over Kunda through the Raja Bhaiyya Youth Brigade, whose large hoardings at the city limits of Kunda warmly welcomed all visitors to an otherwise unremarkable place. Despite a fairly westernised background, Raja Bhaiyya was sent to a local Hindi school, and then to a small secondary school in Allahabad. His grandfather, Bajrang Singh, was a former governor of Himachal Pradesh, and his public school-educated father, Uday Pratap Singh, briefly dabbled in politics. Raja Bhaiyya was born in 1969 in the Bhadri family of local Thakur rulers. The alleged involvement and resignation of Raja Bhaiyya has once again put the spotlight on a chequered political career, a fascinating lifestyle, and a town where locals proudly proclaim, ' Raja Bhaiyya ke ishare ke bina ek patta bhi nahi hilta (Not even a leaf can flutter without Raja Bhaiyya's permission).' But Zia-ul-Haq's wife, Parveen Azad, 24, alleged in a written complaint on March 3 that her husband had been under huge pressure ever since he had taken up the post 10 months ago, and that he had been the victim of a criminal conspiracy hatched by Raja Bhaiyya. The first FIR filed that evening had no mention of Raja Bhaiyya. The crowd first beat him with sticks and rods, and then shot him in the back as he tried to escape. As the crowd got agitated, eyewitnesses say that some of the police officers fled the scene, leaving Zia-ul-Haq behind. The altercation that ensued led to cross fire in which Nanhe Yadav's brother Suresh also lost his life. As the situation turned from bad to worse, Deputy Superintendent of Police Zia-ul-Haq, 32, rushed to the spot with a small group of officers. Enraged, Nanhe's supporters congregated as a torch-bearing mob that began destroying public property, started pelting stones, and attacked a local police station. On March 2, Nanhe Yadav, a local SP leader and newly elected gram pradhan of Ballipur village in Pratapgarh, was sitting at a tea shop when he was gunned down allegedly by a rival group. But guilty or not, the incident is symptomatic of the deteriorating law and order situation in Uttar Pradesh, and of the kill-or-be-killed culture brewing in places such as Kunda, where leaders with rich criminal pasts rule the roost. His detractors from other political parties have not been able to prove a direct link, and informal talk even in the Uttar Pradesh secretariat annexe's revered Pancham Tal (fifth floor, where the chief minister sits) is that Raja Bhaiyya will eventually get a clean chit. In all fairness, the charge against him-of criminal conspiracy in the killing of Zia-ul Haq, the circle officer of his hometown of Kunda-doesn't seem to fly, at least at first glance.

'If I didn't like the officer, I would have easily got him transferred instead of getting him murdered,' he said on TV, to newspapers, and to members of the Samajwadi Party (SP), which he had aligned with after being elected as an independent MLA.

Asked to resign as food and civil supplies minister by Akhilesh, who had propped him last year amidst criticism, Raja Bhaiyya has been talking about his innocence to anyone who will lend an ear.

Raja bhaiya 2003