A chill runs through the spines of bus commuters as they travel through a huge expanse of eerie ravines in central India, once the rearing ground for some of the most notorious outlaw bands in the country.
Miles upon miles of the Chambal ravines, named after the Chambal river that meanders through the central region, were once home to bands of armed bandits who lived for months in its dense, snake-infested jungles and hidden caves, playing hide-and-seek with the police and striking terror at will across a large part of northern India.
Many of them have surrendered over the years. Though bandit groups still stalk the northern Madhya Pradesh badlands, gang leaders no more live in the treacherous ravines. These days, many bandits are playing another role altogether. They have hit the campaign trail for different parties.
Among the former bandits in the political field are Mohar Singh, who is campaigning for the Congress, and Malkhan Singh, a former associate of bandit leader-turned-politician Phoolan Devi, now with the Samajwadi Party.
Malkhan Singh is canvassing for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate from Bhind, incumbent Ram Lakhan Singh, whose main rival is Kedar Nath Kachchi of theBSP.
Local community leaders say the former bandits have made poor politicians - Malkhan Singh lost miserably in the 1996 by - election to the state legislative Assembly-but they still wield enough power to scare off potential voters of rival groupings in the February 28 balloting.
Six persons were abducted from a village close to Chambal on February 21, allegedly by the Haribaba gang, currently the most powerful bandit group in the region. An official in the local police administration alleged that the abductions - attempt to frighten off voters from the socially underprivileged sections-were carried out at the instance of former bandits.
Several other former gang leaders have said they will punish voters who do not vote for the groups supported by them. One of them has threatened to hack the fingers of those who defied his word.
Those days are gone when we lived day and night in fear of bandits...but the bandits themselves have not gone, said Lachchman Yadav, a village elder in Piprai, bordering the ravines.
Like residents who have lived through the carnage that often grew out of bitter caste rivalries, Yadav has gut-churning stories to tell. Women were paraded naked and men lined up and shot dead in minutes in front of their wailing families. Houses were set afire and hard-earned savings looted.
State government officials say the banditry in the Chambal area was partly a result of poverty, poor agricultural yields, police repression, bitter caste feuds and partly due to the aggressive streak among the well-built people of Bhind and Morena.
Incidents of banditry began to show a slide after the government started rehabilitating former bandits, giving them strips of cultivable land and providing better methods of irrigation.
The most famous former resident of this craggy patchwork of hillocks and plateaus is Phoolan Devi. But her surrender over a decade ago did not mark the end of banditry. There are still several active gangs, many of whom are preparing to surrender.
These include Ram Asrey Sharma alias Fakkar, who took to the ravines after a murder in Bhind in July 1979. After the surrender of Phoolan Devi and Malkhan Singh in the 1980s, Sharma sought to fill the vacuum and allegedly left a trail of crime across Madhya Pradesh and the border regions of neighbouring Uttar Pradesh.
Kusuma Naeen, who is alleged to have lined up and riddled with bullets 13 men of Phoolan Devis low-caste Mallah community to avenge the similar slaying of 20 members of the upper caste Thakur community, allegedly by Phoolan Devi herself, is also said to be considering surrender.
Another has-been is Seema Parihar, a sharpshooter sometimes described as the bandit princess. Her name was linked to the notorious gang leader Lalaram, who had allegedly stripped Phoolan Devi.
