Cops, gangsters co-exist: Agni Sreedhar

Bangalore: Agni Sreedhar’s name still strikes fear in people’s hearts.

Today, the refo­rmed underworld don ru­ns his tabloid, Agni, from his house in the city. “Just ask anybody at the ISRO layout junction for the Agni office,” he said, on the phone.

When we stopped to ask for directions, people scuttled off at the mere mention of his name. One man, who denied having any knowledge of Agni Sreedhar, call­ed us back and said in an undertone, “Do you mean Sreedhar?” He gave us hurried directions and rus­hed off. We saw him at Sree­dh­ar’s house a moment later.

We met Sreedhar at his high-security residence the day before the launch of his autobiography in English, My Days in the Underworld,?Rise of the Bangalore Mafia.

His security detail comprises of ten armed body gua­rds, who mill about in the front yard. Sreedhar appears on the balcony overhead, to summon us into a study spilling over with books.

“I read all the time,” he said. “I was always this way,” Growing up, Sreedhar was the mo­del son, the sort of boy all mothers want the­ir children to become. His longtime partner and friend, Bachchan, emerges after a while and sits down with us, characteristically taciturn.

Turning his back on a community that shunned all criminal activity, Sre­edhar shot to fame as he sought revenge on the man responsible for breaking his younger brother’s legs.

The murder of Kotwal Ra­m­­a­chandra, the barbaric gangster who ha­cked men to death in broad daylight, made Sreedhar notorious. He then joined Jayaraj, famously known as late Chief Minister Dev­araj Urs’ right-hand man.

“Politicians, cops and gangsters — they cannot exist without each other. Today, that rowdyism has extended to journalists and lawyers, too,” said Sre­edh­ar. In his book, he desc­ribes the role of politics in organised crime in great detail. “The Indira bri­gade,” he remarks, “Was the start of Benga­luru’s org­anised crime.”

The book is a translation of a three-volume Kan­na­da work. For English-spea­king audiences, who know very little about the workings of the city’s underworld, this book is a revelation.

“It’s a watered-do­wn version,” Sreedhar ad­m­its. “We thought it would be of very little int­erest to readers outside the city. That was a mistake.” Mu­ch has changed since Sree­dhar’s time. “It used to be all abo­ut personal ties. Today, kill­ing is a business, everything thrives on a purely mercenary mot­ive.”

To truly understand a man’s nature, you must watch him starve. A man in danger, who happens to wield a knife, will not hesitate to use it. Sreedhar agrees with this. “Circu­mstances bring out different sides to us, nobody would have believed that I, the quiet, bookish boy, would end up in a life of crime,” he said.

Much has been said about Sreedhar’s famed relati­onship with Muth­appa Rai. The latter, who was once like an older brother to Sreedhar, attem­pted to murder him when their relationship soured.

Today, the past lies forgotten. “We’re good friends, I really respect him. Like me, he never enjoyed violence and gore in the way other rowdies do. I have never end­orsed chopping off a man’s limbs. That’s why people never really took me seriously, when I was a don.”

The experience is like something out a gangster film. We talk of getting ‘worked on’, a colloquial term for being tortured by the police. Before the adv­ent of Muthappa Rai, these men fought with swo­rds (longs). Barging into a bar or restaurant and hac­king a man to pieces, while shutters were brought do­wn and people vanished off the streets in fear — that was daily life, he said.

Sreedhar, who was beh­ind some of the most notorious gang wars in the ci­ty’s history, now talks at length about Albert Camus and Kafka, a passion he rekindled during two yea­rs in prison.

“Violence is used as a tool and yes, I on­ce believed in that.”?All men contain within them a measure of barbarism, all it needs is provocation.