Story of their Assassins continues ………….

It was precisely at this time, when MS was on the run, that the ISI decided to contact him and task him with the killing of the Tehelka duo. MS had been in touch with Kashmiri separatists and ISI agents for some time, as was publicly disclosed in a press conference by the then director general of police (DGP), Bihar. Soon after the DGP made this announcement, he was posted to an innocuous assignment; such was MS’s political clout.

An ISI agent based in Bangladesh, code-named Jain Saheb, was in touch with a stooge in Nepal: Salim Mian Ansari. Ansari was a prominent mafia leader and a former minister of Nepal. He belonged to the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist–Leninist). Two conspiratorial meetings were held at Salim Mian’s Nepal residence sometime around January–February 2001. MS and Jain Saheb were invited. MS, aware of what the meeting was about, had taken a sharpshooter, Bhupender Tyagi, with him. Tyagi hailed from Uttar Pradesh. MS thought he would be an ideal handyman to accompany him.

Before proceeding with the story, it would be pertinent to give a brief background on Tyagi. He was a native of Kisola village in the Bulandshahr district of Uttar Pradesh. His father was a cloth merchant and ran a reasonably successful business. A local goon wanted to extort ‘rangdari tax’ (protection money) from the cloth merchant, which he refused to pay. In the presence of Tyagi, the goon began to beat his father black and blue for refusing to pay him. An enraged Tyagi, then aged only eighteen, picked up a metal ruler—used to measure cloth—and hit the goon on his head, splitting his skull into two. The goon collapsed and died on the spot. Fearing arrest, Tyagi ran away from home. He had little money or personal belongings. He wandered from one place to another, spending nights at relatives’ homes, but soon realized no one was going to give him shelter on a long-term basis.

To be continued …………