Chhatarpur encounter: Families dwell in better past and bitter present

The aftermath of encounters is generally denial; at least for the families of the outlaws who meet their end in one of the most gory ways. Isolating the grief from the notorious trajectory that their sons or brothers left behind, they struggle to sew together the history with present day facts. And in the end, almost all of them dismiss the deceased's link to crime and hark back to their lives before the transition to the underworld.

"My brother was not a dreaded gangster as being portrayed by the police. He had run-ins often, but was not one of those hardened criminals" is what Manjeet, brother of Sanjeet Vidrohi who was killed in the South Delhi encounter last week, has maintained all along. He agrees that Vidrohi had his first brush with law while in school, a common thread that binds all those eliminated in various encounters in the Capital over the years. Rajesh Bharti, who was also gunned down in Chhatarpur, infamously murdered his father when he was 11. Neetu Dabodia from Bahadrugarh, Haryana, who was killed near Hyatt in October 2013, was a minor when he committed his first murder.

Their initiation into crime notwithstanding, families still feel that given a chance, they could have reformed given a chance because there was no love lost for them from their perspective. "It has been two years since he came to the village. He avoided coming home, possibly to keep trouble at bay for us," feels a relative of Viresh who did not wish to be named. Umesh too had not been home since a long time, a fact his uncle in Rohtak confirms. Both Viresh and Umesh died at the hands of Delhi Police in Chhatarpur last week.

And in their conversations, the families also try to humanise the gangsters, sometimes almost turning them into heroes. Sahil Chhikara, Vidrohi's relative is clearly in awe of his cousin. The gun-toting don was a fearless vagabond to him. His voice doesn't betray pride when he talks about how Vidrohi headed the gang despite being younger to Bharti. With equal confidence, he claims that the Delhi Police's most wanted was loved by his entire village. "They knew what he was up to, but it never went against him. People accepted him as he was," says Chhikara.

Like Vidrohi, Bharti, the most dreaded of the lot, also left behind a fan in a young 'student' who idolises him as a 'revolutionary', a modern day Robin Hood. "He was a krantikari. Whatever Bharti did was to help people, and they also recognised the good that he was doing for them," says the boy who claimed he learned English from Bharti.

United in grief, some of them even distanced themselves from them. Vidrohi and Umesh were disowned by their families few years ago when they refused to snap ties with the underworld. A decision that according to Chhikara, his cousin forced them to make, and one that Umesh's family chose willingly. "When he remained to indulge in crime, there was no option but to turn our back on him," shares Umesh's uncle.