GT Road and the inglorious escapades

Nehchal Sandhu

The Grand Trunk Road coursed through the southern lobe of my first policing jurisdiction. Built as Uttarapatha by Chandragupta Maurya in the third century covering over 950 miles from Patliputra (now Patna) to Lahore, extended as Shah Rah-e-Azam from Cox’s Bazar to Peshawar by Sher Shah Suri in 15th century AD, later stretched to Kabul as Badshahi Sadak by the Mughals, and rebuilt by the British over 30 years in the 19th century as the Grand Trunk (GT) Road, it ranks as one of Asia’s oldest and longest arteries.

The Patna-Ranchi highway connecting the summer and winter capitals of the erstwhile state of Bihar intersects it at Barhi, which was one of two bases from which military detachments were sent out to retake Hazaribagh and Ranchi as the Santhal rebellion of 1855-56 and the Mutiny (1857) were overcome. Graves of personnel along the Grand Trunk Road in Barhi’s vicinity bear testimony to those military ventures in the 19th century.

Over time, as even today, the GT Road has been a major trade route, with goods being carried in both directions. The Patna-Ranchi road was and is the principal artery for extracting minerals and timber from the resource-rich Chhotanagpur plateau.

The mainstay of these operations was the jolly trucker; inured to tiresome routines necessitated by tight delivery schedules, these drivers managed to maintain good cheer. Entrusted with overloaded trucks, these hardy and tenacious drivers would make it from one staging point to another 150-200 miles away, assured that a hearty meal followed by ‘spiked’ tea and some rest under a tree would enable them to contend with the journey to follow.

In the mid-1970s, crime along these highways began to rise. After dusk, truckers carrying Rs4,000 or so for buying a truckload of coal (or another commodity) would be relieved of that sum, wrist watches, etc. The brigands involved would choose lonely spots and loot money from 10-15 trucks, and then decamp. In the event of resistance, the dacoits would use iron rods for assault, sometimes leading to deaths.

With a couple of such gory incidents having taken place in my neck of the woods, despite maintenance of the element of surprise in our movements, it was clear that tactics had to be switched if we were to avoid the ignominy of being characterised as a police unworthy of its uniform. As insecurity among truckers rose, so did their resentment against the police.

After several discussions, truckers permitted us to run decoys — we would drive their trucks with a posse of armed policemen under tarpaulin in the cargo space. Just a couple of weeks later, we were faced with a tree felled across the highway in a densely wooded area between Sherghati and Barhi on the GT Road in the early part of the night. As soon as our truck slowed down, several gang members emerged from the shadows. Excited armed personnel in the back jumped out prematurely, causing the gang leader to order an immediate withdrawal. Nimble footed, they took flight. Only one of the brigands, a tyro in the gang, could be apprehended. He disclosed that most of his criminal colleagues were from Varanasi district 140 miles away.

Hardly a few weeks later, we struck gold during another decoy operation in the winding segment of the Patna-Ranchi highway near Tilaiya Dam, not too far from the GT Road at Barhi. We were at the end of a line of trucks halted in their tracks due to the hold-up. Despite an unhurried move forward in plainclothes, a scout spotted us and sounded an alarm. In panic, the robbers clambered up the adjacent hill.

The cordon that was quickly laid was soon joined by armed personnel requisitioned from nearby police stations. Meanwhile, truckers kept their headlights on, decanted diesel from their vehicles and set alight the brush on the lower margins of the hill, and the spirited ones wielding iron rods to avenge the murders of their colleagues joined us. The robbers were soon rounded up. We had some difficulty in subduing gang leader Kanhaiya Misir, whose wrists were too big for the largest pair of handcuffs we had; he had, therefore, to be restrained with Manila rope. As it turned out, this gang was from Sasaram 110 miles away, the birthplace and later headquarters of Sher Shah Suri. Their confessions helped detect many unsolved cases, and a number of successful prosecutions ensued.

The jurisdiction remained free of incidents of highway robbery for the next 18 months. Rather naively, I fancied myself as William Henry Sleeman. My presumptuousness was soon bared as I read impressive accounts of extirpation of many large organised gangs of thugs, who were ruthless robbers and murderers, by Sleeman as General Superintendent of The Thugee and Dacoity Department established in 1835. During eight years of stewardship of the department, Sleeman developed elaborate intelligence and profiling techniques, that predated similar methods in Europe and the US by decades. Recognised for his talents, Sleeman was knighted after being elevated to the rank of Major General.

Little did I realise then that, just a few years later, I would join the Intelligence Bureau, which traces its lineage to the Central Special Branch set up in 1887 as a wing of The Thugee and Dacoity Department by the Secretary of State for India. It was rechristened thrice — as Central Criminal Intelligence Department in 1903, then Central Intelligence Department in 1918, and finally Intelligence Bureau in 1920; in that avtar, it has clocked a centenary.

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