Story of their Assassins continues ………….

He was arrested and sent to Roorkee Jail. Desperate, he sent word to Sant to help him escape. Towards the end of 1997, with Sant’s help, Tyagi fled from police custody while he was being escorted back to Muzaffarnagar Jail from the Roorkee court. He ran straight to Gopalganj where he met Sant, who welcomed him into his gang with open arms. Upon realizing Tyagi was meant for bigger things in the world of crime, Sant introduced him to one Mukul Rai, a local gangster with political links. Rai in turn took Tyagi to Suraj Bhan, a notorious criminal-turned-politician of Bihar. Bhan, then an MLA, sheltered him in Mokama at his own residence. Tyagi was given a 9 mm pistol and trained in the handling of an AK- 47 along with other automatic and semi-automatic weapons. Thereafter, he committed over two dozen murders as a hired assassin of Bhan and any businessmen willing to pay him to settle scores with their rivals. One of these murders was the sensational elimination of Tun Tun Singh, an extortionist businessman based in Motihari, Bihar.

Soon, Bhan realized Tyagi was more than a handful, and in 1998, he asked Mukul Rai to introduce Tyagi to an even bigger crime lord. He was taken to Mohammad Shahabuddin. Tyagi was just the sort of gang member MS was looking for—desperate, unscrupulous and daring. Tyagi committed several sensational crimes at MS’s behest, including the infamous adhivakta (advocate) murder case of 2000 in which Tyagi killed Raghubir Sharan, an advocate and a witness in a case against MS’s aide Manoj Kumar aka Pappu. He did not hesitate to kill Sharan’s wife and their ten-year-old son, who were witnesses to Sharan’s cold-blooded murder.

Some months later, on 15 January 2001, Tyagi went on to commit the Roshera ‘narsanhar’ (massacre) in which seven people were killed and nineteen seriously injured, although the target was only one person, namely, Murari, a small-time criminal who had the gumption to elope with the sister of one of Tyagi’s gang members.

To be continued ………….