For one summer, they terrorised the citizens of one of the world's largest cities, modern-day highwaymen who shot first and never bothered with questions.
There have been other biker gangs, maybe more famous biker gangs, but in India the one run by Om Prakash has become the stuff of urban legend. Prakash was a mixture of Dick Turpin and Al Capone, a hoodlum from whose reach no one in Delhi was safe. In a weeklong blitz at the height of his reign of terror, he was credited with no fewer than four murders. That he went by the nickname Bunty did nothing to lessen the fear he struck into the citizens of India's capital.
But all reigns are finite: Turpin dangled from the gallows in the end, Capone was undone by the taxman. Last week it was Bunty's turn to reach the end of the road. He went out like Butch and Sundance, in a blaze of gunfire, finally cornered by the same police who had faced ridicule for their failure to lay a finger on him. It was a fitting end. India is no stranger to gangs of motorcycle-mounted bandits, but they have tended to be nameless terrors, temporary alliances of like-minded opportunists whose successes were quickly forgotten.
The mob who emerged at the start of the summer were simply Bunty's gang. Even his henchmen became household names: Pinki, Panni, Israel, Kalu and Zakir. It was not that they operated with style or charm. They did not have the glamour of the bandit in the Bollywood biker gang flick Dhoom. It was simply the sheer ruthlessness that brought them to the fore. It began in April, a few robberies at first, quickly gathering pace. Motorcyclists were the initial target as the gang relieved them of first their wallets, then their machines, building up their resources, getting more confident.
Delhi's police commissioner, YS Dadwal, tried to stem the mounting sense of panic, blaming the media for creating alarm and insisting that crime was falling. "I would like to point out that the crime situation and law and order are under control," he insisted. But the public looked at the evidence and were unconvinced. In the first two weeks of July there were reports of nine shootings and nine people dead. Inevitably, Bunty's gang got the blame.
The crimes came thick and fast, and as the toll mounted, so did the violence. The property dealer Gurmeet Singh, also known as Sonu, was the first to die, gunned down on July 5. The 25-year-old was confronted outside his business and shot by five men on motorbikes. Police said they believed he and Bunty had been business partners. Even by this point, Bunty's charge sheet featured 27 cases of robbery and theft.
"Bikers gang on prowl in city," one newspaper trumpeted. Mahesh Kapoor, a 54-year-old accountant, was next. He took nine bullets when he refused to let go of a bag containing about 130,000 rupees (Dh10,690). The friends Ashneet Singh, 24, and Harjeet Singh, 26, stood no chance when the gang opened fire on them in south Delhi's Amar Colony. A few minutes later, another man was dead. Sanjeev Suri, 30, was waiting at traffic lights in the upmarket Defence Colony when the riders struck. One of their machines had run out of fuel: when he protested at their attempts to take his bike, they shot him dead at point blank range.
So it went on. Police put a 50,000-rupee (Dh4,105) price on the heads of five members of the gang, including Bunty - a sizeable sum in a country where many earn less than a 10th of that in a month. It made no difference. The gang continued to strike at will, often, police noted, operating in pairs so there was always a fallback machine on which to effect their getaway. They only stole Pulsar motorcycles, sleek sport machines with a half fairing made by India's Bajaj company, because they were fast and reliable. They did not want to sell them, just use them to commit more crimes and ensure a swift getaway.
Often, they did not bother to demand anything before opening fire. All they cared about was that they did not want to leave behind anyone who could identify them. The brothers Mohammad Safiq, 38, and Mohammad Atiq, 28, were critically wounded when three members of the gang rode up behind them early one July morning. "We run a potato trading business at the Lal Bagh Subzi Mandi," their father, Mohammad Rafiq, said. "First, the robbers fired a bullet that missed their target. The second bullet fired by them hit the back portion of Safiq and he fell down. The bikers then tried to snatch the bag [containing 10,000 rupees] and some documents including an account register. Atiq tried to stop them from doing that and they pumped three bullets inside his body."
By now, every shooting or robbery in Delhi was being attributed to Bunty. People were fascinated to know more about him. Where had he sprung from? From nowhere, it seemed. Born 30 years earlier in the Sangam Vihar slum area of Delhi, Prakash had dropped out of school early and by the age of 19 was picking pockets on the city's Blueline buses. Between 2002 and 2005 he was behind bars. Physically unimposing - he stood just 1.7 metres tall - he was for some time after his release a police informer. His family, tiring of his acts of petty criminality, disowned him in February this year. His wife had long since had enough and left him.
But Bunty was undeterred. He wanted to get on in the criminal world. Police said he dreamed of becoming an underworld don, using his notoriety to move into the more lucrative world of extortion. To drag himself up from the gutter, he had been attempting to learn English: "Do you study English? Yes I do" were the first lines he had written in an exercise book after signing up to the Rapidex English speaking course.
"He wanted to become an English-speaking don," said the senior police official HGS Dhaliwal. "He was ambitious and street smart." Yet until April, he had been nothing but a petty criminal. He was out on bail after a series of motorcycle thefts when he launched his killing spree. Yet he could not even ride a bike. It was always his sidekick Rajesh, also known as Panni, who took the handlebars, with Bunty riding pillion.
Stories about him snowballed. He had visited a temple in Madhya Pradesh to thank the goddess Kali, the four-armed deity associated with death and destruction, for his success. He did not trust his accomplices and kept a secret diary where he kept the phone numbers of those he had to deal with in a code known only to him. He collected newspaper clippings of his latest outrages. He had escaped a police checkpoint by posing as a student. He ruled his gang with an iron fist, beating any who questioned his commands.
When police caught up with the gang member Israel a few days after the final showdown with Bunty, he offered an insight into the cocksure nature of his leader. "Whenever we told him the police was after us, he asked us not to worry," Israel told police. "He used to tell us that he was there behind us. He also showed us the newspaper clippings which carried our photographs. Bunty used to motivate us by saying the reward money on our gang should reach [500,000 rupees]."
But Bunty was not confident enough in his men to cut them too much slack. "He never allowed us to keep the sophisticated weapons. The weapons we used in our crimes had to be returned to Bunty. He kept them in his custody," Israel added. As Bunty's profile grew, the police were having a torrid time. Indian newspapers mocked their efforts to track the gang and pointedly referred to their failures. It seemed all they could do was classify Bunty as a BC (bad character) - the worst type of criminal - and hope he slipped up.
To make matters worse, the gang seemed to treat the carrying out of murder as nothing more than an occupational hazard. Israel's account of the killings of the two men in Amar Colony was chilling in its matter-of-factness, even allowing for the formal nature of a police statement: "I was involved in the murder and robbery and I shot them down. After that, there was not much fuel left in the bike and we decided to abandon it. We robbed another bike near Defence Colony. A man who tried to intervene was also killed."
Yet as the gang's infamy grew, life on the run became more difficult. Initially they had holed up in the village of Garhi Shhedra in Noida, south-east of Delhi, telling local people that they were repo men who were collecting bikes from those who had defaulted on their loans and drinking with villagers to gain their confidence. But when their pictures were released by the police, they scattered. On Aug 1, their luck began to run out. According to the official version of events - and it is a version not universally accepted - it was an uncharacteristic display of cunning by the officers leading the hunt that eventually led to Bunty's demise.
Hoping to lure members of the gang into the open, the police circulated a report that Bunty had been killed. It was broadcast on a cable network popular in his home district of Sangam Vihar. The following day, they followed it up with another spurious news item, this time that the girlfriend of the 27-year-old gang member Zakir had committed suicide. It appears to have been enough to flush Zakir into the open. He called a friend in Sangam Vihar. "Bunty has been killed, now what will happen to us," he asked. The police traced the call.
When they burst in, the police had another stroke of luck. Two other members of the gang were also present. The net was closing. The gang had split up but by now the detectives had built up a detailed profile of their families and were keeping them under intense surveillance. When Panni called a member of his extended family on Aug 12, police immediately traced the address. But Bunty was one step ahead of them.
He headed for Delhi to regroup. Meanwhile, Zakir was interrogated and, according to the police account, he cracked. He gave them enough information to lay a trap to catch the boss. It was Aug 23 and police were sure they were about to get their man. Expecting their target to pass along a road in the Kalindi Kunj area of the city, the police had staged an accident. They planned to block the road once Bunty's bike slowed down.
For four hours, they waited, and then they spotted the bike. Bunty was riding pillion as usual, Rajesh was up front. But Bunty was not finished yet. The traffic was heavy, and police knew he would start firing as soon as they appeared. They could not take the risk. So they backed off and let him go. But time was running out. Bunty, now with 42 serious crimes on his charge sheet, including murder, attempted murder and robbery, had just two days left to live.
What he could not know was that the police had infiltrated an informer into the gang. To start with, Bunty had been suspicious of the man, but the informer had begun to win him over. On the morning of Aug 25, he called police to say Delhi's most wanted man was holed up in a house in the village of Saurabh Vihanear near Badarpur, between south Delhi and the town of Faridabad. The police were determined that this time, Bunty would not elude them. They knew he was a light sleeper and that if the local dogs started barking as they made their way to the house, he could make his getaway. Taking no chances, they sent an officer out to buy 10 bags of expensive chicken-flavoured popcorn to slip to the animals so that they did not alert the fugitives.
The plan worked, up to a point. The dogs lapped up the popcorn, and the police edged closer to their quarry. If the police version is correct, the end, when it came at about 5.30am, befitted the hunt. Approaching the gates, the police saw that they were locked from the outside. Had Bunty done it again? The answer came in a volley of gunshots. The gang leader and his faithful sidekick Panni were still inside. For a quarter of an hour, they held off the assault, winging four of their assailants. But they could not hold out for ever. Eventually, the firing stopped.
When the police entered the building, they said, the two men were past helping. Panni was already dead, Bunty mortally wounded. He was dead on arrival at hospital. Inside the house police found a stash of guns and a magazine, in Hindi, featuring the story of India's "most wanted don". Just as Bunty had finally arrived, he departed. "Bunty Shot", the headlines screamed the next day. No other explanation was needed. Delhi breathed a collective sigh of relief. At last it was over.