Gaya locals recall how Bindi Yadav, father of Rocky, accused of killing Aditya Sachdev, was once a dreaded ‘don’. M I Khan traces his story and finds that he was a virtual nobody 25 years ago.
Legend has it that Bindeshwari Prasad Yadav, aka, Bindi owns many malls, hotels, over a dozen petrol pumps and top-of-the-line SUVs, not to mention a palatial house and untold properties and land. But it wasn’t so always.
“In the late 1980s, Bindi was a petty criminal,” a social activist in Gaya’s Rampur locality tells Rediff.com.
Old timers in Gaya’s A P Colony, where the Yadav family have a palatial home, recall the time when Bindi was beaten black and blue by a local when he was caught stealing a bicycle in the 1980s.
“He was a small time ‘goonda’ then,” recalls a local.
Making a name
Bindi rose to notoriety with his crime soulmate Bachchu Yadav around the time Lalu Yadav came to power. That was in the 1990s. Bindi’s crime graph went up, and up after that. The duo came to be known as Bindi-Bachchu, and terrorised Gaya for the next 2-3 years.
Such was their reign of terror that the then Lalu-led government was forced to depute a tough Indian Administrative Services officer as district magistrate and a tougher Indian Police Service officer as the superintendent of police in Gaya.
Together, they invoked the Crime Control Act to tame Bindi-Bachchu, and even managed to send the duo to jail a few times.
Later, Bindi switched gears and gained even more notoriety when he started forcibly grabbing prime properties and land in Gaya at gun-point.
According to the Gaya police, there are 11 criminal cases, including kidnapping to murder lodged against him. These do not include the over two dozen pending cases.
The other side
Bindi ‘transformed’ himself in the late 1990s when he joined the Rashtriya Janata Dal.
“Bindi had begun the journey to transform himself from criminal to politician, and he was a success,” says a local.
With the support of RJD in 2001, he was elected unopposed as chairman of the Gaya district board and held the post until 2006.
“Lalu ignored Bindi’s criminal past and promoted his political career that helped him gain wealth and power through contracts and other business,” alleges another local.
But in 2005, his luck changed and during the state assembly polls, Bindi was denied the RJD ticket, and was forced to contest as an Independent candidate from the Gaya Mofussil seat but lost.
Past catches up
In the 2010 assembly polls too, Bindi had unsuccessfully contested from the Gurua seat, albeit on an RJD ticket.
In March 2011, Bindi was arrested with around 4,000 rounds of AK-47 ammunition and cash, and slapped with a sedition charge. There were whispers that he was involved in supplying illegal firearms to Maoists.
After Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal-United and the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power for the second time in 2010, Bindi shifted his loyalties to JD-U.
In 2015, his luck changed again. Though he could not get a ticket because an ‘image-conscious’ Nitish was not ready to entertain him, he managed to get his wife Manorma Devi elected on a JD-U ticket.
But when it looked that good times were again knocking on Bindi’s door, his past legacy and arrogance that he passed on to the next generation came as a bad omen.
It was evident on Saturday night, when his son Rocky, driving a silver Land Rover vehicle, which costs around Rs 1.5 crore and armed with a licenced Italian pistol (cost around Rs 10 lakh) got into a fight with Abhishek Sachdeva and his friends, who were returning home after a birthday party.
Aditya had overtaken Rocky in his Maruti Swift car, and in the altercation that followed, Rocky allegedly shot dead the teenager.
Bindi and his wife’s bodyguard, Rajesh Kumar, were arrested on Sunday.
He has been charged with harbouring and facilitating the escape of his son, who was arrested on Tuesday. Rocky, however, has denied all charges.
