QUESTION
Bharat Kalicharan, also known as Akku Yadav, was an Indian gangster, robber, home invader, kidnapper, serial rapist, extortionist, and serial killer who lived from 1971 to 2004. Yadav grew up in the Kasturba Nagar slum, located just outside Nagpur, Maharashtra’s capital city. He lived and worked in the slum, home to several criminals and two rival gangs.
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Yadav’s first recorded crime was a gang rape in 1991. For 13 years, until his death, Yadav and his gang committed crimes such as rape, murder, home invasion, and extortion in Kasturba Nagar. Yadav attempted to build a small business empire by extorting money and harming and threatening those who opposed him. Yadav murdered at least three people during his criminal career. He tortured and kidnapped people, broke into people’s homes, and raped more than 40 women and girls. He bribed police officers by giving them money and buying them drinks to persuade them to let him continue committing crimes. As a result, for many years, the police refused to arrest Yadav and supported him. As a warning to those who resisted him, Yadav and his associate gang-raped women and girls as young as ten.

A mob burned down Usha Narayane’s house after she resisted Yadav and his gang. Yadav approached the police for help. On August 13, 2004, he was lynched by hundreds of women who stabbed and stoned him. He was sprayed with chilli powder and had his penis hacked off. All the women claimed responsibility for the murder, and while some were arrested, they were eventually acquitted. Even though hundreds of women were involved in the lynching, the State CID told a different story. According to senior police sources, the lynching was carried out by four men, with the women who claimed responsibility for protecting them. Any of the women did not accept the police version. According to police, both men and women were present when the lynch mob appeared. On the day of the lynching, BBC News reported that 14 women and several children stormed the courtroom and stabbed Yadav to death. A film based on the incident, 200: Halla Ho, was released digitally on ZEE5 on August 20, 2021. On Netflix, a little web series titled Indian Predator: Murder in a Courtroom was released, depicting the victims’ stories and interviews. [1]

Biography
Early years
Akku Yadav grew up in the Kasturba Nagar slum outside Nagpur, Maharashtra, in central India. His two brothers were Santosh and Yuvraj. [2] Yadav lived and worked in the slum, home to some criminals and, according to police, two rival gangs. Swati Mehta wrote in her book Killing Justice: Vigilantism in Nagpur, “by all accounts, a child of the neighbourhood, Akku had graduated from milkman’s son to local menace.” [3]

Crimes
Authors Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn wrote in their book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide: “In some ways, Akku Yadav was Kasturba Nagar’s other success. He was a despicable man who had turned his apprenticeship as a small-time thug into a position as a mobster and slum king.” [4] Yadav oversaw a gang of criminals that ruled the Kasturba Nagar slum. With impunity, they robbed, tortured, and killed people. Yadav committed crimes for many years while building a small business empire. He and his gang members frequently harassed and intimidated people to extract money. His primary source of income was extortion,[5] and he would harm people if they did not give him money or offended him in any way. [6] In typical Yadav fashion, he threatened to rape anyone who resisted him. [4] It is well known that many of Yadav’s rape victims were Dalits [7], who have a disproportionately tricky time receiving justice in cases of sexual assault. [8]

Yadav harassed Pratibha Urkude and her husband Dattu, who ran a small grocery store. He would pick up goods from the shop and either refuse to pay or pay far less than what was owed. He would sometimes demand money and become violent if they did not pay. [9] Yadav was constantly concerned that he was being plotted against. As a result, he forbade men and women from gathering and conversing. He ensured that young boys did not play together; if they did, Yadav broke up their games. Suspicious that people were questioning him, he would warn them not to report his crimes to the police, threatening them if they did. [9] The killing resulted in inconvenient corpses, requiring him to bribe the police to prevent them from stopping his crimes.

Rape, on the other hand, was highly stigmatized, and as a result, victims could be counted on to remain silent. Yadav raped people far more frequently than he murdered them. Yadav’s killers claimed he had been raping and abusing local women with impunity for over a decade. They claimed that local police refused to assist his victims or pursue charges against him because Yadav was bribing them. [4] According to Mehta, Akku Yadav’s first crime was gang rape in 1991. Rape, murder, robbery, extortion, home invasion, assault, and criminal intimidation were among his other crimes. [3] Yadav had been arrested 14 times before his death. He was detained for a year in late 1999 under the Maharashtra Prevention of Dangerous Activities of Slumlords, Boot-leggers, Drug Offenders, and Dangerous Persons Act 1981. [3]

Yadav allegedly raped so many people that residents of the Kasturba Nagar slum claim that a rape victim lives in every other house.

[10] Yadav is accused of raping over 40 women, with the youngest victim being a 10-year-old girl.

[11]

[12] One person described Yadav as “the Gabbar Singh of Kasturba Nagar”, saying, “We stayed mostly indoors when Akku was around”. Women have claimed that Yadav and his gang would break into homes at any time of day. [13] He occasionally desired a motorcycle, a mobile phone, or money. [13] Yadav and his gang would beat up anyone who stood in their way. [13] He murdered Asha Bai, Anjana Bai Borkar’s daughter, in front of her 16-year-old granddaughter. Borkar was one of five women arrested in connection with Yadav’s lynching. [5] When asked about Yadav, the granddaughter stated: “We were eating dinner when he came in and pretended to be my brother’s friend. He dragged my mother out of the house and stabbed her. He then severed her ears for earrings and her fingers for rings because he couldn’t get her rings.” [5] According to reports, Yadav murdered at least three people and dumped their bodies on nearby railroad tracks. [10]

Yadav attacked a woman and her husband, according to one woman. He arrived at their house between 4:00 and 5:00 a.m. Yadav pounded on their door, claiming to be a police officer and asking them to open it. When Yadav arrived, he stabbed the husband in the thigh with a knife, locked him in the bathroom, and dragged the wife away by her hair to a location where he raped her. Yadav gave her permission to return after three or four hours. [14] Yadav was barred from entering Nagpur in January 2004. [15] Yadav brutally beat an older adult named Harichand Khorse, who earned a small amount of money playing a musical instrument called a Baja, because he couldn’t pay 100 rupees. [15] According to Kasturba Nagar residents, Yadav raped a woman shortly after her wedding. [4] He also stripped naked a man and burned him with a cigarette before forcing him to dance in front of his 16-year-old daughter. [4] Yadav tortured a woman named Asho Bhagat in front of her daughter and several neighbours by chopping off her breasts. Yadav then killed Bhagat by slicing her into pieces on the street. One of the neighbours, Avinash Tiwari, was horrified by the murder and planned to report Yadav to the police. Yadav butchered him as a result. [4] Ten days after giving birth, Yadav and his men gang-raped a woman named Karma. Karma committed suicide after what happened to her; she burned to death after dousing herself with kerosene and lighting it. [4] Yadav’s gang kidnapped another woman while she was seven months pregnant. They stripped her naked and raped her in broad daylight on the road. [4]

Yadav directed his men to drag girls as young as 12 to a nearby derelict building and gang rape them.

[10] A large number of Yadav’s victims reported his crimes. Instead of arresting him, the police told him who had reported the crime and that Yadav would pursue them. The police assisted Yadav, protected him, and supported him; he bribed and gave them drinks. When a 22-year-old woman reported Yadav raped her, police accused her of having an affair with him and arrested her. Police turned away several women after telling them: “You’re a free spirit. That’s why he molested you.” [10] According to one woman, Yadav and his associates gang-raped her. The police responded by raping the woman in a gang. [16] Twenty-five families evacuated Kasturba Nagar. On the other hand, people removed their daughters from schools and locked them inside their homes where no one could see them. Homemakers had to travel to distant markets to buy food because vegetable vendors avoided Kasturba Nagar. Police would not intervene as long as Yadav only targeted poor people. [16]

Yadav and his men went to the house of a woman named Ratna Dungiri to demand money after she raped a 13-year-old girl. Her furniture was smashed, and the gang threatened to murder her family. When a woman named Usha Narayane arrived later, she advised Dungiri to go to the police station. Dungiri refused, so Narayane went to the police station and filed a complaint. They informed Yadav of the complaint. Yadav and forty of his associates surrounded the Narayane house two weeks before he died, enraged by her actions. [17] Yadav carried a bottle of acid and yelled through the door that if Narayane dropped the complaint, he would not harm her. Narayane refused to surrender and barricaded the door. She called the police, and despite being told they would arrive, they never did. [17] Meanwhile, Yadav kept pounding on the door and threatening her, saying: “I’ll spit acid in your face, and you won’t be able to file any more complaints! You have no idea what we’ll do to you if we ever meet! Gang rape is nothing! You can’t imagine what we’ll do to you!” Narayane shouted back insults, and Yadav responded with descriptions of how he would rape, burn her with acid, and murder her. [17] Yadav and his men tried to break the door down. In response, Narayane turned on a cylinder of gas that the family used for cooking and grabbed a match. She warned that if they broke into the house, she would light the match and blow herself and all of them up. The criminals smelled the gas and left Narayane alone. [17]

The neighbours heard about what Narayane had done and were now willing to go after Yadav. Soon there were many angry victims on the streets, and they started to pick up sticks and stones. People threw stones at Yadav’s associates. His men saw the crowd’s mood and fled. The victims marched through the slum and celebrated. On August 6 2004,[10] they went to Yadav’s house and burned it down. [18] Yadav now feared for his life and went to the police for protection; they arrested him for his protection on August 7 2004. [19] [11] Yadav’s mother vacated his house. [20] On August 7, Yadav was due to appear at the city district court, and 500 slum residents gathered. As Yadav arrived, one of his men tried to pass him knives wrapped in a blanket; the police failed to notice this. After the women protested, the accomplice was arrested, and Yadav was taken back into custody. He threatened to return and teach every woman in the slum a lesson. [10] On August 8 2004, a group attacked Yadav while he was being taken before the court; he survived the attack only to be lynched five days later. [13]

Death

Crime scene photo depicting Yadav’s blood on the courtroom floor
After the police arrested Yadav for his protection, a bail hearing was scheduled for him on August 13 2004, in India’s Nagpur District Court. Word spread through the adjoining neighbourhood that he would be released. The police planned to keep him in custody until everyone calmed down and released him. The bail hearing was supposed to take place miles away in the centre of Nagpur.

Hundreds of women marched from the slums to the courthouse carrying vegetable knives and chilli powder, walked into the courtroom and took seats near the front. Yadav walked in and was confident and unrepentant. At about 2:30 to 3:00 p.m., when Yadav appeared, he saw a woman he had raped. Yadav mocked her, called her a prostitute and said he would rape her again. The police laughed. [10] The woman started hitting him on the head with her footwear. [18] She told Yadav either she would kill him or he would have to kill her, saying, “We can’t both live on this Earth together. It’s you or me.” [19] [10]

Yadav was then lynched by the mob of 200–400 women who showed up.

[10] He was stabbed at least 70 times, and chilli powder and stones were thrown in his face. The chilli powder was also thrown into the faces of police officers who guarded him. The police officers, overwhelmed and terrified, fled immediately. [10] One of his alleged victims also hacked off his penis. The lynching occurred in Nagpur District Court No. 7 on the marble floor of the courtroom. [10] As he was being lynched, Yadav was horrified and shouted: “Forgive me! I won’t do it again!”. The women passed their knives around and kept stabbing him; each woman agreed to stab Yadav at least once. His blood was on the floors and walls of the courtroom. [21] In 15 minutes, Yadav was dead; he was 32 years old. [10] The mob continued attacking his corpse post-mortem. [22]

The women claimed the murder was unplanned. One woman said: “We didn’t have formal meetings, but it spread by word of mouth that we had to take united action.” [13] The State CID had a different version of the lynching. According to senior police sources, the lynching was done by four men with sharp weapons, and the women of Kasturba Nagar claimed responsibility for the lynching to protect those men. [13] None of the women agreed with the police version, and the police said both men and women were there when the lynch mob appeared. [13] BBC News reported the lynching on the day it occurred, saying: “Initial reports said about 14 women and several children forced their way into the courtroom” and stabbed Akku Yadav to death. [23]

Aftermath

Crowd demanding bail for the accused killers of Yadav.
The women returned to Kasturba Nagar to tell their husbands and fathers they had killed Yadav. The slum celebrated, and families played music and danced in the streets. They bought food and handed out fruit to their friends. Five women were arrested immediately but released following demonstrations in the city. Every woman living in the locality claimed responsibility for the lynching. [10] Usha Narayane was arrested and charged with murder, as were other women. A crowd of 400 women and more than 100 men and children gathered at the courthouse to support the women. The crowd said they would not move until the women were granted bail. [24] In 2012, Narayane was acquitted. [2] Twenty-one others, including six women, were also arrested and released due to lack of evidence. [25]

A judge noted a lack of reliable witnesses to the lynching, including inconsistent police statements, and cited Yadav’s autopsy report, which showed alcohol in his system, as proof that he received preferential treatment from police.

[2] Retired high court judge Bhau Vahane publicly defended the women who lynched Yadav, saying: “In the circumstances they underwent, they were left with no alternative but to finish Akku. The women repeatedly pleaded with the police for their security, but the police failed to protect them.” [21] Vahane also said: “If they took law into their hands, it was because the law and law-enforcing agencies had not given them succour.” [20] ACP Dalbir Bharati said: “There are 200 women who say we did it. The investigating officer found no weapon or blood marks on the five women who were arrested, we found no evidence against these women.” [20] Shortly after Yadav’s death, Outlook, an Indian magazine, reported that local police spoke indirectly about gang-war rivalries between Yadav’s group and a smaller one that allegedly supported the women. [20] According to Outlook, a nephew of Yadav swore revenge for his lynching. [20] In 2014, it was reported that all of the remaining accused in the Akku Yadav murder case were released due to a lack of evidence. [2] [26]

In 2011, a documentary about Yadav called Candles in the Wind was released.

[27] On the night of December 4 2013, a nephew of Yadav named Mukri Chhotelal Yadav was stabbed to death at age 30 by two teenagers aged 15 and 17. Mukri allegedly made sexual advances on one of the teenagers’ grandmothers and had once threatened her with a knife. [28] The grandmother, who was in her 50s, was teased by Mukri, and he often intimidated her. The grandmother told the teens about this, and the teens warned Mukri, but he continued to victimize the grandmother. Mukri, like Yadav, also had a history of crime. [29]

In 2015, a movie inspired by Yadav called Keechaka was released. It was controversial, and women protested against the movie because of the graphic violence against women depicted in it. The movie’s director, N.V.B. Chaudhary, defended it, saying it supports women. [30] 200 Halla Ho, a crime thriller film released in 2021 featuring actor Amol Palekar, was based on Yadav.
QUESTION
Discuss about “Usha Narayane” and her story. Include her name, where she was from, what her ‘story’ was, what gender-based violence happened to her, the outcome, etc. Details required.