Police shot dead India’s most wanted bandit yesterday, ending the 30-year reign of a criminal hailed by poor villagers in the north as the country’s modern-day Robin Hood.

Shiv Kumar, known by the alias Dadua, had ruled the forests and ravines of the central states of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh since the late 1970s, when he first appeared on the official list of feared outlaws. He was wanted for more than 200 cases of murder, extortion and kidnapping and had a bounty of 500,000 rupees (£6,000) on his head.

After a fierce two-day gun battle in the Chitrakoot region, about 185 miles (300km) southwest of Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh, he was killed by a special task force along with four of his accomplices, Inspector-General A. K. Jain said.

No photograph of Dadua has ever been taken, and the authorities had only a vague idea of what he looked like. He was identified by local villagers. Dadua, who was believed to be in his mid50s, led one of the few remaining bands of outlaws, known as dacoits. For centuries they have roamed central India, their exploits romanticised in Bollywood movies.

The 155-mile stretch of forest was his hunting ground. By providing protection for tendu contractors – the suppliers of the leaves that are used to roll indigenous cigarettes – and extorting ransoms through abductions, his gang was thought to earn more than £1 million a year.

He routinely shared their gains with local villagers – particularly those from his own low Kurmi caste – to ensure their support, and with politicians to guarantee his immunity from the law. This is how he managed to evade the police for so long.

The first and last time that he was arrested was on May 16, 1978, after he shot the man who had murdered his father.

He came close to capture on a couple of occasions since then. The first time, he gave the police the slip by draping himself in a sari and disappearing into a crowd of women. Another time, he tricked officers when he showed up to the inauguration of a temple dressed in the saffron robes of a sadhu, a Hindu priest. He vanished quickly after the rituals, leaving as his parting gift an Assam elephant tethered to a banyan tree at the temple gates.

His luck ran out when he backed the wrong party in recent state elections and tried to gain assembly seats for members of his immediate family. Upon her election as chief minister, Mayawati Kumari made it the priority of her Bahujan Samaj Party to rid the state of crime and corruption.

Dadua was India’s most wanted bandit after Veerappan, a Tamil ivory and sandalwood smuggler, whose 20-year reign of terror in three southern states ended three years ago when he was killed by police.

Most wanted

— Phoolan Devi, the “Bandit Queen”, turned to crime in revenge for sexual abuse. She eventually became an MP in the Indian Parliament, before being assassinated in 2001

— Man Singh was implicated in 185 murders and over 1,000 robberies until his death in 1955. He was apparently a pious man with strict morals

— Nirbhay Gujjar, who had a distinctive handlebar moustache, was shot dead by police in 2005. He was sought in connection with two dozen murders and 200 kidnappings

Source: Times Archives, Khaleej Times

Times Recommends

• Henning Mankell: ‘If Wallander was alive, I wouldn’t be a friend of his’
• Secret society's skull and crossbones for sale
• Nigerian leader vanishes after medical treatment