TNN
 
Lucknow, Jun 22: Jamauli, 180 km off Allahabad, looks like straight out of Rip Van Winkle's scrap book. Education, health, hygiene are alien words to the Mallah families that inhabit a few dozen bleached and caky mud houses, arrayed along its dirt track.

Silence in the village is eerie after sustained boom of gunshots and grenades that rent the air for 50 hours during the fierce battle between bandit Ghanshyam Kevat and UP police three days ago.

"Caste division in the area is razor sharp," says Rudra Pratap Mishra, a social activist working for women empowerment in Chitrakoot. "Villagers in the interiors still avoid accosting a Brahmin early in the morning lest their shadow defile him". History tells them this is the only way to survive. "Unless you turn a 'baghi', a path that the 33-year-old Ghanshyam took," he says.

Kevat, a villain to UP police for killing four of their comrades, is an unquestioned hero for Urmilla, his 30-something widow traced by TOI to Sardua village . "He rebelled against circumstances," she says, "he deviated from straight path only to avenge the rape of his niece Chimiya (name changed)".

"The girl was brutally raped by a Thakur nine years ago. He ran from the daroga to sarpanch, but none gave him a hearing...he was mocked and humiliated. So what else could he have done?" she wails as other women join her.

While villagers do not approve of Kevat's deeds, each has a story to tell about how the accursed land of Bundelkhand can turn a perfectly good man to evil. Thokia, the baddie who gunned down half a dozen policemen one-and-a-half years ago, had run away from home in a neighbouring village after the alleged rape of his sister. His appeals to authorities went unheeded. Even the village panchayat, called to settle the issue, humiliated him and his family. Thokia lived the rest of his life in the jungles and died in the jungles.

"Honour killing is a cult in this area, dominated by sarkari samantwad (feudal lords of the government)," says Chandra Bhushan Awasthi, a social activist from Karvi. "Dalit women become an easy prey of forest employees and lower police functionaries when they go to the jungle to collect wood," Awasthi says.

"Till late 70s and even 80s, UP bandits belonged to upper castes — names like Man Singh, Mohar Singh, Madho Singh — but now it's the backwards and Dalits like Nirbhay Gujjar, Dadua, Thokia, and now Kevat, who rule the scene," explains Awasthi. Pratap Kevat, a resident of the village, is firm that two wrongs do not make a right. "While few can deny the rape allegations of the bandit's niece (now married and settled), Ghanshyam turned a serial rapist himself and, therefore, deserves little sympathy," he says.