So this was Dara Singh's hideout. I stand on a bald stretch near a small hillock covered with trees and honeycombed with caves. Around me I can see paddy and potato fields. Bandiria hill at this hour is deserted -- as it is at most times. The nearest hamlet is Gohira, one km away. The people there are yet to recover from the fact that a criminal of such notoriety has been nabbed from so close. "Are you sure he is Dara? Did you see him?" a young man asks. "He used to pass this way often. A good man. Very friendly and respectful," an old man offers. Dara, a good man? The man who burnt Graham Staines and his two sons alive at Manoharpur, hacked Rehman at Padiabeda and shot Arul Doss at Jambani, all within a year, is a good man? The villagers believe so. Was he a modern-day Robin Hood? "Well, sometimes he used to help us. He never harmed us. He rescued cattle taken for butchering!" they tell me. The villagers can't remember anything bad about Dara Singh. In fact, some of them would like to punish the man who acted as the police decoy and 'betrayed' their 'Guruji'. Guruji? Yes, Dara Singh used to teach them Hindi. As I leave the tiny hamlet cramped with huts, a teenager ventures, "What will happen to him?" At Kuliana, some distance away, there is the same faceless crowd numbering about 2,000. They are neither sad not happy that Dara Singh has been nabbed. Just curious. "He never came this way," they tell me. Following the arrest, this sleepy village has suddenly come to life. Top police officers and camera-wielding journos have landed up. All thanks to a lean, dark, gaunt man. "I saw him when he was brought here by the police. He looks exactly like that photo there," a young man points to a poster on the police station's colourless wall. "Why do you cover his face?" I ask the deputy inspector general of police. "We have to." "But why?" I persist, and he turns away. Finally, Dara is produced, flanked by policemen. His face is covered with a towel -- and so are his manacled hands. A television journalist spits in disgust. I hand a tiny automatic Yashica to a constable and ask him to snap the man in the lockup when nobody is looking. He doesn't like the idea. If he is caught he might lose his job. But the excitement of it overtakes him and his unprofessional hands yield the first photo of Dara in captivity with his face uncovered! I proceed to Baripada, the district headquarters 20 km away. Khurania, the young superintendent of police, is understandably jubilant. Dara is reported to have said that he surrendered and was not arrested? "That is what they all say," he replies. "A spark of bravado, a last-ditch effort to save his image...that had he wanted he could not have been caught. That is what it is all about." What about the rumour that the government spoke to him and made him surrender for obvious electoral gains? If not, how is it that a man who remained so elusive was nabbed just a couple of weeks before the assembly election? "That's a good question. But it (the rumour) is the Congress's game plan. They want to malign the BJP through Dara, who will be made to say all sorts of things about the BJP, VHP etc on the assurance that his sentence will be reduced," says a part-time journalist and full-time political worker. He smiles. Khurania is not amused. "That's not true. People may believe what they want to. But don't take away the achievement from these brave policemen," he says. Balaram Sagar, the dark, wiry inspector who overpowered Dara, nods his approval. "Only we know the trouble we faced and the risk we ran. Should we be labelled as pawns in a mean political game?" he asks. No, that wouldn't be fair, I say. With a hard day's grind behind me I leave Dara Singh to his hard grind ahead. Bibhuti Mishra is based in Bhubaneswar.
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