Patna: Bihar, and neighbouring Jharkhand, which was part of Bihar till 2000, have seen quite a few civil servants nurture political ambitions. However, no one has ‘used’ their office to prepare the political turf for themselves quite as assiduously as the 1987-batch IPS officer, Gupteshwar Pandey.

Pandey applied for voluntary retirement, or VRS, on September 22 and was relieved from his post of Bihar's director general of police (DGP) within hours the same evening – five months before his scheduled retirement in February next year. On Sunday, September 27, he announced he had joined the Janata Dal (United), the party heading the government that rules Bihar in alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party.

The 59-year-old officer had denied he had plans to join electoral politics, but those who have known him knew very well that the Bollywood actor Rhea Chakraborty was spot on when she said the controversial FIR filed against her in a Patna police station in connection with the death in Mumbai of her boyfriend and Bihar native Sushant Singh Rajput was politically motivated.

That FIR, which became the basis for the matter to be taken out of Maharashtra's hands and given to the CBI, allowed the Centre and its friendly media houses to plunge the country down the rabbit hole of a wonderland filled with endless crimes, real and imaginary.

"Robin Hood" politics

Pandey might not have even packed up all his uniforms properly but promptly came out with a video song on the day of his 'retirement' that made no secret of his grand design to cash in on the SSR death controversy, which he too immensely contributed to. Titled ‘Robinhood Bihar Ke’, the otherwise fast beat of the song turns slow and sad in the second half as it recalls how Bihar's superstar son SSR was 'murdered' and how DGP Pandey's crusade led to the CBI probe in the case.

The video also has close-up frames of Pandey and his heroics, like clenching his fist in slow motion a la an angry Ajay Devgn as Singham in reel life. A batchmate of Pandey responded with an LOL emoji on seeing the video forwarded to him on WhatsApp.

The lyrics create a narrative that is absolutely absurd. The song eulogises him as the police officer who evokes fear among criminals like no other cop; as the one who rips apart the bodies of criminals; as the one whose very arrival at a place (of criminals) sees ‘dhuan-dhuan'  (smoke billowing out of gunshots and explosions) envelope the area.

None of the districts, including Chatra, Jehanabad, Aurangabad and Ranchi (now in Jharkhand), where Pandey worked as the SP or district police chief witnessed such a spectacle. As the SP of Begusarai, he did take on the notorious Ashok Samrat and his photo with Samrat’s seized AK-47 did make it to the media.
But that was in early 1990s when Pandey was young. In later years, Pandey was not known for even maintaining a low crime rate. The crime graph in Bihar, as per the National Crime Records Bureau, didn’t paint a flattering picture. But Pandey has his own take on this. “Where does crime stop? Nowhere. Police’s job is to try to prevent crime; once it takes place, police’s job is to arrest the criminals and bring them to justice,” he told the media shortly after he became the DGP of the state.

The video's title, 'Bihar ke Robin Hood', is also completely absurd. Robin Hood is arguably one of the best-known tales of British folklore, but Pandey has never been the messiah of the poor. Unlike Robin Hood, he was at no point  during his 34-year tenure ever known for inconveniencing the rich and powerful to help the poor. Never.

Also read: Nitish Kumar Has Set the Stage for Bihar Ex-DGP Gupteshwar Pandey's Political Career

Take, for instance, the case of Manoj Kumar Srivastava whose sympathies for pro-poor agitations were publicly known. The late Bihar IAS officer of 1980 batch, who went on to do a course in pro-poor governance from the London School of Economics on a scholarship, was often seen in the midst of the poor and Dalits during his days as the district magistrate (DM) of Bhojpur and Rohtas, and later during his field trips to the countryside of Bihar as an LSE scholar. Pandey was not even remotely like Srivastava.

But Pandey has been arguably more media friendly than others in Bihar's bureaucracy – since his days as a young superintendent of police (SP) of Begusarai when he took on the notorious Ashok Samrat. His photo with Samrat’s seized AK-47 made its way to the front pages of newspapers in the 1990s. In an interview recently, he himself boasted that he knew 500-odd journalists.

In the spotlight

Almost all the friends and acquaintances of Pandey will agree he is an affable man. But Pandey's affability was often artificial.

This, a journalist experienced recently when he zealously travelled in the night to shoot illegal sand mining in Koilwar, 50 km west from Patna, and apparently impressed with Pandey's self-cultivated image of an indefatigable DGP who works 24x7, called him in the wee hours to tell him about the loss to the state exchequer. During that telephone call, the reporter was called "behuda" more times than he might have heard the word his entire life.

To be fair to Pandey, "behuda" translated into English means "mannerless". His contemptuous tone, however, left no one in doubt that he was using the term as an expletive for the journalist's temerity to phone him in the dead of the night. Perhaps Pandey would have been cautious had he known the man on the other end was recording the conversation and that he would be all over TV and social media the next day.

While Pandey’s acerbic tongue drew publicity far and wide through the viral recording, he did not bother to take action against the illegal sand trade. At least no such move was heard of, as the sand traders continued to thrive stealthily. Months later, Bhojpur SP Har Kishore Rai, took it upon himself to rein in the miners.

According to Pandey’s own admission during the recorded conversation, lawmakers and law-enforcers were also involved in the sand plunder. And Pandey never made headlines for taking on politicians even though ‘criminalisation of politics’ and ‘politicisation of crime’ have been an open secret in Bihar. Not surprisingly, Pandey always bagged field postings having been SP in as many as ten districts!

Also, never was he unceremoniously shifted out of any district by any of the six chief ministers he worked under.

Pandey has lakhs of followers on social media platforms, but he never shined as brightly in the eyes of people on ground as, say, his IPS senior D. N. Gautam. Residents of Rohtas district came out on the streets to protest against SP Gautam’s transfer after he was said to have launched a hot chase for Girish Mishra,
a Congressman whose party was in power in the state in 1980s. A few years later, Srivastava’s transfer from the post of Bhojpur DM after his spat with the local Congress MP also led to civic unrest, bringing the district to a halt for several days.

In 2008, Paresh Saxena was shunted out from Gaya only six months after his posting as district SP as he reportedly ordered a reinvestigation into an alleged case of murder involving state assembly speaker Uday Narayan Choudhry.

Also read: The Curious Case of the Bihar Top Cop in the Limelight Since Actor Sushant's Death

A few years back, Rohtas SP Shivdeep Lande was given marching orders after six months as district SP when he went after the politically patronised mafia engaged in illegal stone mining in Kaimur hills in 2015. Even an IB report to the Union home ministry talked of the mining mafia being behind Lande’s premature ouster from Rohtas.

Besides being media friendly, Pandey involved the community in policing certain districts which he helmed as SP, and therefore, became known to people – a fact his supporters describe as the reason for his popularity. He was, however, never as popular as the likes of Lande or the late Srivastava.

Pandey's batchmate Sunil Kumar is also eyeing a seat in the state legislature. So is his IPS senior Ashok Kumar Gupta of 1977 batch. They are also likely to contest the upcoming election although they didn't court any controversy while in office in the run-up to the election.

Nor did Jharkhand DGP V.D. Ram use his office to create an aura around self. Four years after he demitted office, he contested and won the parliamentary election from Palamu in 2014.

Pandey's case is different, though. He is said to have been planning a political plunge for over a decade and had even applied for VRS ahead of the 2009 parliamentary polls. Denied a ticket at the last moment, he managed to get reinstated in the IPS nine months later.

The next 11 years were time enough for Pandey to use his power and position for preparing and projecting himself as a stronger claimant for a ticket to his dream destination – the legislature.

Pandey may or may not win. He may or may not become the messiah of the poor in years to come. But he was never a Robin Hood when he wore khaki. Period.

Raj Kumar is former deputy resident editor with the Times of India. He is working as a journalist based out of Bihar for 30 years. 

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