Munna Bajrangi: A classic antagonist who cheated death, killed people, and tried luck in politics

In the emergency ward of the hospital, the doctors also confirmed them to be dead. The bodies were then sent from the morgue of the hospital for post-mortem. But to everyone's surprise, after some time, a ward boy came running from the morgue to inform that Munna Bajrangi was still breathing. Doctors had removed 8 bullets from his body but one bullet remained stuck near the heart.

Lucknow: Munna Bajrangi, who was known as Prem Prakash Singh when he committed the first murder of his life at the age of 17, once managed to make the entire Purvanchal tremble with the mere mention of his name. With the guidance of a notorious gangster like Gajraj Singh, the teenager took no time to turn into one of the most wanted of his times.

Back in the 90s, when the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party were trying to strengthen their ground in Uttar Pradesh, criminals in the state felt they had no one to fear. Infamous gangsters like Raja Bhaiya, Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, DP Yadav, Mukhtar Ansari, and Atiq Ahmed used to roam around in open. This accounted for a breeding ground for goons like Munna Bajrangi who established their presence in the mafia world quite easily and went down in history as one of the most notorious gangsters.

Journey from Prem Prakash to Munna Bajrangi

Born in 1967 in the Dayal village of Jaunpur, Munna Bajrangi always wanted to become a don. The first-ever criminal case was registered against him for possessing an illegal firearm when he was merely 14, after which there was no looking back. Then started a series of heinous crimes including murder, robbery, and kidnapping. His name first caught the limelight when he murdered BJP leader Ramchandra in broad daylight in front of the Jaunpur jail. After Mukhtar Ansari became MLA from Mau in 1996, Munna Bajrangi's actions caught pace. As a special henchman of Mukhtar Ansari, Munna Bajrangi started leading crimes like murder, kidnapping and extortion of ransom with great audacity.

MLA Krishnanand Rai's murder

Munna Bajrangi launched his first major attack in November 2005, when he murdered BJP MLA Krishnanad Rai in a Qualis vehicle with an AK-47. Six more vicious criminals were involved in this murder along with Munna Bajrangi, killing a total of 6 people. The reason for this massacre was the infamous rivalry between Mukhtar Ansari and Krishnanand Rai which took deeper roots during the 2002 elections, when Krishnanand Rai defeated Afzal Ansari - brother of Mukhtar Ansari - with support from mafia don Brijesh Singh. This murder shook the government as well as the UP Police to its core. Munna Bajrangi was now on top of the most wanted list of UP Police.

The gangster who came back from his deathbed

Earlier in 1998, the UP Special Task Force (STF) was laying a trap to nab the famous mafia don of that time, Prakash Shukla. When the STF started tracing the phones of some criminals in relation to this probe, they got inputs that Munna Bajrangi, a 50,000 rewarded crook who carried out several murders in Jaunpur, is in contact with several arms dealers in western Uttar Pradesh. Acting on the inputs that Munna Bajrangi is coming from Haridwar to Uttar Pradesh along with arms dealer Hitendra Gurjar, the STF formed 3 teams - one to chase Munna Bajrangi from Haridwar and the other two to wait for him by laying a trap beforehand.

On September 11, 1998, the STF team surrounded Hitendra and Munna Bajrangi near a petrol pump in Samaypur Badli, Delhi, followed by a fierce firing. Munna Bajrangi got hit with nine and Hitendra with two bullets in the firing. A Delhi Police constable also got shot in the firing. When STF jawans looked at both of their pulses, they concluded them to be dead. Munna Bajrangi and Hitendra Gurjar were thus declared dead in the encounter. Both their bodies were then taken to Ram Manohar Lohia Institute for formalities.

In the emergency ward of the hospital, the doctors also confirmed them to be dead. The bodies were then sent from the morgue of the hospital for post-mortem. But to everyone's surprise, after some time, a ward boy came running from the morgue to inform that Munna Bajrangi was still breathing. Doctors had removed 8 bullets from his body but one bullet remained stuck near the heart. When Munna regained consciousness, the doctors told him that a bullet was still in his body, dangerously close to his heart and that it could be a risk to extract it. Munna refused to remove that bullet and it stayed right there in his body for another 20 years until his last breath.

Munna Bajrangi in the election fray

Even after seeing death so closely, Munna Bajrangi's crime graph did not see a decline. Bajrangi, who had served as a hand for many politicians by then, himself jumped into the election fray in 2012. Despite being lodged in Delhi's Tihar Jail, he was given a ticket by Apna Dal and Peace Party. He lost the elections, only to get even more brutal with his wrongdoings. With the number of crimes he committed after that, the prize money for this gangster soared up to Rs 7 lakhs.

Bajrangi's classic villain end

After a long tussle with the police, Munna Bajrangi was finally arrested in 2009 from the Siddhavinayak Society in Malad, Mumbai where he was hiding with his wife and three children under his old identity of Prem Prakash Singh. On July 8, 2018, Munna Bajrangi was brought to Jhansi jail in UP. The very next day he was shifted to Baghpat jail. But in the early hours of July 9, another history-sheeter Sunil Rathi, who was imprisoned in the same jail, shot Munna Bajrangi with 10 bullets in the head and ended his story. With the end of the mafia don of Purvanchal who had become synonymous with terror for nearly three decades, the police breathed a sigh of relief.