Moon Gazer continues....

Usually sighted in their undergarments, they were commonly referred to as the ‘kachchha-banyan’ gang in police circles as well as in the media. Not much was known about their place of origin, their way of living and what made them habitual criminals and mindless killers. No database was available on them. Arrests, if any, were few and far between, with little effort to track their backward linkages.

The British, when they ruled our country, believed that certain communities in India were congenital criminals. Labelling them as criminal tribes, they enacted the Criminal Tribes Act in 1871, which, after several amendments, became the Criminal Tribes Act of 1911. Certain castes and communities branded as criminal tribes under the Act were subject to strict restrictions on their movements, required to report to the nearest police station on a weekly basis and liable to search and arrest if found outside their prescribed area. On account of this ‘branding’ and stereotyping, the social ostracism, alienation and social exclusion of about thirteen million people belonging to 127 tribes followed.

When India became independent, this repugnant piece of colonial legislation, branding communities as habitual criminals and damning them forever, was repealed in 1949, and subsequently, criminal tribes were de-notified in 1952. This story is about a gang that belonged to one such erstwhile criminal tribe, whose members were identified, arrested and studied by us. By way of a disclaimer, it must be said that this story does not, in any way, suggest that people belonging to this de-notified tribe are habitual criminals or are not part of the mainstream social and national life. This account is only about those who, despite the passage of time and the government’s efforts to wean them away from crime, were addicted to it, at least until their paths crossed ours.

To be continued……