But for me the immediate task was the one for which I had been entrusted with, and it was to break the backbone of the criminals operating in Bagaha to ensure lasting peace.

Bagaha was very tense, when I had taken charge and I really did not know as to how crime could be controlled in a district with such tough topographic and geographic challenges. Bagaha was on the extreme north-west corner of Bihar. On the southern side of the district lay the diara of the mighty river Gandak which enters India in Valmikinagar. The diara stretched for several kilometers at places and had 4 administrative blocks and 4 police stations on the other side of the river, which were then approachable only either by way of physical crossing of the river and walking for miles, or by using vehicles for traversing a distance of more than 100 kms through the neighbouring district of Kushinagar in Uttar Pradesh. It was virtually impossible to physically dominate the diara by mere presence of force, and I realized this pretty early in my tenure. The diara had several streams flowing in between the several landmasses which were like virtual islands.

I always remember my first attempt to carry out a full scale combing operation in the diara with about 150 men. It was launched towards the middle of December, and in order to achieve the desired objectives, we had started quite early from Bagaha to reach the other side of the diara after a 2 hour journey through UP. We had information about one particular gang of Chumman Yadav (who was responsible for the killing of the farmers), residing in a certain part of the diara along with two kidnapped victims. The plan was to try to ‘comb’ a large region of the diara with a sort of parallel formation of force. We had also put in three police teams at 3 strategic locations on the corners of the diara where the gang members were expected to flee on seeing the police.