Yogi Adityanath said ‘gunda raj’ over and people bought it. But UP crime still the worst

'On the same day that eight policemen were gunned down in Uttar Pradesh, two equally horrific incidents went unnoticed. First, four members of a family were murdered in Allahabad. Then, a 19-year-old Dalit girl and her father were murdered by her stalker, who belongs to the Thakur caste, days before her wedding. These are not isolated incidents, but part of a larger crime arc that would have been labelled ‘gunda raj’ if they had occurred under the governance of a lower-caste Chief Minister. The Yogi Adityanath government’s brazen touting of encounters, overwhelmingly used against petty criminals who are either Muslim or belong to backward castes, has indeed won it popular approval. But it has also spectacularly failed to curb crime on the ground...'