A handlebar mustache. A gold ring glinting in one ear. Four rifle-toting men at his side. A bulky frame wedged into a green open jeep. Ramvir Singh Kushwah looked like he had just driven out of a crime film. As he cruised through the dusty streets of Madhya Pradesh’s Guna, the words “Dau Rannod” across his windshield would announce his arrival.

But he wasn’t a dau — a local chieftain. He was a cop who wore the khaki while allegedly stitching together a criminal network that lasted nearly two decades.

Today, nearly 17 years after a colleague’s letter accused him of abetment of suicide, Kushwah remains among India’s most wanted former policemen. He has seven FIRs against him in Guna alone – most of them filed before he was expelled from the force in 2022. The bounty on his head has soared from Rs 10,000 to Rs 50,000, personally announced by the DGP. Yet somehow, Kushwah continues to slip through the fingers of the force he once served.

His alleged crimes read like a gangster’s résumé: murder and masterminding a criminal network that carried out robberies in cities, from Delhi to Hyderabad. 

The most chilling part? Most of this was allegedly known, whispered about in police circles, and feared by locals. Still, action came too little, too late. It took repeated complaints and court intervention for the Madhya Pradesh police to finally book him. 

But arresting him? That’s a different story. 

From constable to criminal

A bus conductor from Shivpuri district’s Rannod village who became obsessed with the police uniform, Kushwah joined the Madhya Pradesh police as a constable in 1997, ostensibly to chase criminals. 

But according to police investigators who examined his criminal record, he spent years cultivating his own network of them, as constable, and then with his promotions as assistant sub-inspector and sub-inspector in 2010 and 2013, respectively. 

Over time, Kushwah handpicked gang members, offering them protection in exchange for a cut of the loot and using them for jobs ranging from intimidating rivals to executing high-stakes city dacoities, according to CID officials who probed him. His preferred partners were criminals from the Pardhi community – a semi-nomadic group stereotyped as a “criminal tribe” during the British Raj – from Guna’s Dharnawada tehsil, where he spent most of his career, they said.

The earliest signs of this alleged nexus came with the suicide of a police officer.

On February 21, 2008, Assistant Sub-Inspector Mohabbat Singh Raghuvanshi, posted at Jhagar police outpost under Dharnawada police station, died by suicide inside the outpost. In his suicide note, he alleged a nexus between gangs from the Pardhi community and then constable Kushwah. The note claimed that some of these gangs were carrying out dacoities in several states on Kushwah’s instruction. When he learnt about Kushwah’s activities, the latter allegedly misled other police officers that it was Raghuvanshi who was leading these gangs. This led to harassment within the force, the letter claimed.

Despite two petitions in the High Court, repeated appeals to the Human Rights Commission, letters to the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh and senior police officials, and even a recommendation from the Sub-Divisional Magistrate for an inquiry by the state DGP or CBI, no investigation has taken place. 

Raghuvanshi’s brother-in-law Lakhan claimed the police shielded Kushwah. “My sister, Guddi Bai, Mohabbat Singh’s wife, died in 2021. After her husband’s death, she lived with only one purpose: to see Kushwah punished for targeting an honest officer. That wish went unfulfilled. Even today, despite the DGP announcing a reward for his arrest, Kushwah roams free.”

Years after this letter came a robbery in Delhi’s posh Defence Colony that once again highlighted Kushwah’s alleged involvement in such crimes.

The robbery that exposed the ‘nexus’

On a sweltering night in April 2022, a gang of eight men broke into a bungalow in South Delhi’s upscale Defence Colony. Around 3.30 am, the robbers entered the two-storey house and took a 68-year-old woman and her six-year-old granddaughter hostage. They tied up their victims and threatened to kill them if they made any noise. The gang escaped with jewellery worth Rs 4 crore.

A Delhi Police investigation suggested that a Pardhi gang from Madhya Pradesh was behind the robbery.

Nine months later, an accused, Raja Nathuda of Khejra village in Dharnawada, told the police that the stolen jewellery was with Sub-Inspector Ramvir Singh Kushwah of Guna Police, suggest police diaries. In January 2023, Delhi Police visited Dharnawada and Kushwah’s ancestral village in Rannod, Shivpuri, to trace him.

But by then, he was already on the run, charged by the Madhya Pradesh CID with the alleged murder of one Atmaram Pardhi.

The Atmaram Pardhi murder

On June 9, 2015, Atmaram, a resident of Dharnawada’s Khejra village with a theft case against him, had gone with relatives to immerse the ashes of a family member near the Parvati river. Kushwah decided to zero down on him while the police were trying to identify suspects in a robbery case. 

Kushwah arrived on the spot with constable Yogendra Sisodia, and aides Raghu Tomar and Dinesh Gurjar. Tomar has 24 cases against him in nine police stations across MP and Rajasthan.

According to a CID report, Atmaram refused to accompany Kushwah, who allegedly shot him, officers investigating the case told Newslaundry. Atmaram fell into the river. Sisodia, Tomar, and Gurjar pulled him out and loaded him into Kushwah’s vehicle. When the women of the family tried to intervene, Kushwah assured them he was being taken to the hospital. But that was the last time they saw him alive.

For nearly two years, Atmaram’s mother Appi Bai allegedly went from one police station to another, but didn’t find any answers. She moved the Gwalior bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court with a habeas corpus petition in January 2017. The court issued notices to the IG, Guna SP, and the Dharnawada police station in-charge. Only in March 2017 – three months later – was a missing person complaint filed, which was converted to a kidnapping case a month later. 

Police recorded statements from Appi Bai and her relatives before a magistrate, but Kushwah carried on untouched. It took a leaked video and a long legal battle for Kushwah to be named in the FIR. 

In 2019, footage secretly shot by a policeman captured Kushwah’s aide, Dinesh Gurjar, describing how Atmaram was killed near the river. Gurjar allegedly boasted that Kushwah had killed “five or six more people,” naming himself, Raghu Tomar, and Sisodia as present during the crime.

In August 2019, Atmaram’s relative Sulochana Pardhi filed a fresh petition seeking a CBI probe. The case was eventually handed over to the state CID. By 2022, the probe had shuffled between 10 different officers with no progress.

It was only after the High Court pulled up the CID for inaction in December 2022 that the case finally moved, years after Appi Bai’s death in 2020. Deputy Superintendent Satish Chaturvedi took charge, and the police investigation finally confirmed that Atmaram was dead. The police named four accused: Kushwah, Sisodia, Tomar, and Gurjar. Kushwah was dismissed from service; Sisodia and Gurjar were arrested. But Kushwah and Tomar remain absconding to this day.

A total of three FIRs were filed in the case. The first one in 2017, the second in 2023, and another in 2024. The first case initially invoked kidnapping charges, and later added charges pertaining to attempted murder and murder. The second case was linked to non-appearance in court. The third case was for alleged cheating and false evidence.

Kushwah faced two more FIRs for alleged threats to witnesses in the Atmaram Pardi case in Guna in 2019.

Atmaram’s niece, Ranjita Pardhi, alleged, “It’s not difficult to catch him. Many lower-rank officers are avoiding his arrest, even though the DGP has declared a reward for it.”

It was not the only case that pointed to how Kushwah allegedly misused his uniform.

The mysterious death of a truck driver

For a decade, 70-year-old Gopal Singh Kushwah of Lalitpur has fought for justice for his son, Makhan Singh Kushwah, whose burned body was found on June 21, 2015, outside the Ruthiyai police outpost under Dharnawada station, then headed by Sub-Inspector Ramvir Singh Kushwah.

Makhan’s father has alleged that Kushwah used to extort money from truck drivers who used to pass through Dharnawada police station and was forcing his son to pay him. The death was linked to extortion, he alleged.

According to a petition by Makhan’s father before the Madhya Pradesh High Court, the police first told the family that Makhan’s hands were burned while repairing truck wiring. But when his brother reached the hospital, Makhan was already dead, wrapped in plastic. 

At the outpost, police claimed he had soaked his shirt in diesel and set himself on fire – though the truck’s tank design made this impossible. The next day, Kushwah told the media Makhan killed himself in grief over his wife’s death. But the post-mortem showed burns consistent with the body being set alight while lying down.

The high court in 2019 ordered a probe by SP Rahul Lodha. An FIR was filed against unidentified persons in December 2019. Another FIR followed in February 2020, naming Kushwah and Head Constable Hari Mohan Singh Parihar as the accused. The inquiry also suggested Makhan’s wife was alive, contrary to Kushwah’s suicide claim. Investigators noted Kushwah failed to secure CCTV footage, record a statement, conduct forensic checks, or even examine Makhan’s truck.

But in 2022, SP Rajeev Kumar Mishra reported “insufficient evidence” to prosecute Kushwah. Gopal Singh has since appealed to the President, Governor, CM, and DGP, demanding a CBI probe. He alleged Kushwah masterminded a cover-up, pressured him to drop the case, destroyed evidence, and staged a fake inquest.

‘Can’t say how long it will take to arrest him’

A senior police officer, who investigated the Atmaram Pardhi murder case and prepared the CID report in the case in 2023, said: “Kushwah hails from Rannod village in Shivpuri district. Before joining the force, he worked as a conductor on private buses and jeeps. Obsessed with the police uniform, he became a constable in 1997 after class 12. His first posting was in Shivpuri, but he was soon shifted to Guna’s Dharnawada, an area dominated by the Pardhi community. Nearly 90 percent of his career was spent there, and over time, Dharnawada became his personal fiefdom, where he built both his power and his criminal empire under cover of the khaki.”

The officer claimed Kushwah learned the Pardhi language and befriended criminals from the Pardhi community, “making them informers – not for policing purposes, but to run his own parallel gang”. “He gained attention by carrying out 'encounters' and even got out-of-turn promotions. But most of these encounters were staged; criminals already in police custody at his private hideouts were killed according to police whims."

An inspector who served in Guna for many years claimed: “After his posting in Guna, Kushwah concentrated almost entirely on the Pardhis and soon became known as an ‘expert’ on them, even while secretly running a gang himself. Whether it was Delhi Police, Gurgaon Police, Tamil Nadu Police, or other state forces, they often turned to him whenever a dacoity case pointed to Pardhi gangs. By assisting visiting teams, he built a reputation as a helpful officer with deep local knowledge. But the truth was different. He would hand over rival gang members – sometimes with no link to the crime – or give a portion of stolen goods as ‘recovery’. The larger share of the loot stayed with him, and he was directly involved in several robberies. Over time, he grew powerful enough to continue his operations unchecked, right until 2022.”

A senior police officer in Bhopal, familiar with Kushwah’s activities, claimed: “It’s been nearly three years, and despite court orders, his properties were never seized. That speaks volumes.”

When Newslaundry asked CID Inspector Rajendra Bhadauriya, the current investigating officer, about the delay in Kushwah’s arrest, he said: “I have only recently taken over as IO. I don’t know much about the case yet, and I can’t say how long it will take to arrest him.”

Guna SP Ankit Soni said, “CID was investigating the (Atmaram) case so everything, including the arrest in this case, will be done by them. I just got posted here three months ago. However, I have started technical surveillance on him. If things turn out to be in our favour, we will arrest him.”

Newslaundry reached out to DGP Madhya Pradesh Kailash Makwana. This report will be updated if they respond.

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