UP's Most Feared Gangster Ever | The Curious Mic with Rajesh Pandey | ft. Rahul Shrivastava | Jist

Retired IPS officer Rajesh Kumar Pandey reveals how the Uttar Pradesh STF tracked down one of India's biggest criminals, Shri Prakash Shukla. In an exhaustive interview with Rahul Shrivastava, Mr Pandey said the STF was initially formed with the aim to end Shri Prakash Shukla's reign of terror in the 1990s.

Mr Pandey, a founding member of the U.P STF and ATS, is a veteran of several anti-mafia and anti-terror operations. He was involved in over 80 encounters apart from implementing a surveillance system that aided in crime detection. His major investigations include 2005 Ayodhya terror attack, 2006 terrorist attack on
Varanasi's Dashashwamedh temple, and the Faizabad and Lucknow court blasts.

This interview traces the growth of the mafia in eastern Uttar Pradesh, the criminal-politician-police nexus that flourished and how it was ultimately dismantled.

Shri Prakash Shukla's notoriety had struck fear in Lucknow. The manner in which he committed murders at will in broad daylight shook up the U.P government, especially during the second tenure of Chief Minister Kalyan Singh from September 1997 to November 1999.

The Gorakhpur-born criminal began by targeting leading businessmen of Lucknow. In January 1997, Shri Prakash Shukla fired 80 bullets at lottery king Vivek Shrivastava on the busy Latouche Road.

On 31 March 1997, Shri Prakash Shukla brutally murdered former MLA Virendra Pratap Shahi outside a school in Lucknow. The postmortem report showed 126 apertures on Shahi's body.

Equally dramatic was the killing in June 1998 of Bihar minister Brij Behari Prasad inside a hospital in Patna. He sprayed bullets from an AK-47 that he was hiding under a blanket.

His links with the Bihar mafia bosses like Surajbhan Singh propelled his rise in the underworld. He enjoyed protection from ministers, either out of fear or connivance.

One of the senior most and prominent BJP leaders of the time, Lalji Tandon, was also threatened by Shri Prakash Shukla who had a habit of directly calling people for extortions.

In the late 1990s, U.P was going through a phase of political instability which even saw the state get a chief minister who was in office for merely three days. But when reports came of Shri Prakash Shukla taking a contract to kill CM Kalyan Singh, a special police unit was created to end Shukla's menace.

Soon after he killed businessman KK Rastogi and kidnapped his son, the STF was born in 1998 with the exclusive mandate to get rid of Shri Prakash Shukla's criminal enterprise within six months.

The STF, a team of committed police officers, lived up to CM Kalyan Singh's expectations. Mr Rajesh Pandey was a key member of the STF team which shot dead Shri Prakash Shukla and his two mafia associates after a car chase on the Delhi-Ghaziabad border on 22 Septmeber 1998.

By the time Shri Prakash Shukla met his end, he had killed about 85 people.




0:00-4:00 - Introduction
4:00- 7:18 – Why Rajesh Pandey wrote 'Varchasv'
7:18-9:09 – Challenges of a first IPS posting
9:09-10:12 – The formation of STF in UP
10:12- 11:48 - Businessman KK Rastogi’s murder
11:48-12:27 - NYPD inspired fight against UP mafia
12:27-13:06 - Ajay Raj Sharma, the man behind UP STF
13:06- 15:20 - Kalyan Singh gave green signal to STF
15:20- 16:41 – UP cops began using computers
16:41-22:00 – Mafia infiltrated UP politics
22:00-23:55 - Shri Prakash Shukla's first strike
23:55- 26:55 - Shukla's brutality boiled down to 'Varchasv'
26:55- 30:00 - Gorakhpur became mafia nursery
30:00-31:52 - Bihar & UP mafia seized Purulia AK-47s
31:52- 38:28 - Shukla stalked & killed mafia rival Virendra Shahi
38:52-40:30 – Lucknow’s ‘Lottery King’ killed in cold blood
40:30 - 41:45 – The long list of Shri Prakash Shukla’s victims
41:45-44:46 - Shocking murder of Bihar minister in hospital
44:46-46:00- "Itni Goli Marunga Police 5 Ghante Tak Peetal Beenegi"
46:00- 47:16 - Shri Prakash Shukla's predatory intent for women
47:16-51:00 - Rajesh Pandey's first encounter with Shiv Prakash Shukla
51:00- 54:46 - Shri Prakash Shukla became a byword for terror
54:46- 59:37 - How the gangsters turned against each other?
59:37-1:05:45 - STF struggled to find Shri Prakash’s photo?
1:05:45-1:07:08 - Criminal who took a "Supari" of a CM
1:07:08- 1:09:07 - Senior BJP minister sought refuge in hospital
1:09:07- 1:11:27 - Raids in Bihar for Shri Prakash
1:11:27- 1:16:47 – Neta-mafia nexus in times of political instability
1:16:47 - 1:21:26 – Shri Prakash Shukla’s deep political patronage
1:21:26-1:27:46 – Chase that spelled Shri Prakash Shukla’s endgame
1:27:46 -1:34:00 – End of the Podcast