Former repeat cattle-trafficking offender rebuilds life after a transformative intervention by SSP Shashi Mohan Singh
☀️ Community policing under Operation Shankhnaad sparks behavioural change among at-risk youth in Saitangar Toli
☀️ Bablu Shankh Dhaba inaugurated at state border as symbol of rehabilitation and lawful livelihood
By : Akshay Lahre
Jashpur : For nearly a decade, the forested belt of Saitangar Toli in Jashpur lived under the shadow of a name that stirred both fear and inevitability: Amjad Hajaam, known locally as Bablu. A repeat offender in multiple cattle-trafficking cases, he spent years slipping across state borders, vanishing into the night and resurfacing only when rumours spread of police pressure mounting again. His world was a cycle of flight, risk and isolation. For eight months, he remained a fugitive, moving from place to place until mounting pressure finally forced a surrender.
Yet, what followed was something even the local police had not imagined. After his release from jail, Bablu was brought to the office of Senior Superintendent of Police Shashi Mohan Singh. It was not an interrogation. It was a conversation about choices and consequences. The SSP spoke plainly, asking him how long he intended to keep running and what awaited him at the end of a path defined only by fear. The words, Bablu recalls, were the first time he fully understood the emptiness of the world he had chosen and the danger it posed to his family’s future.
That meeting shifted something inside him. The man who once evaded patrol teams through dense forest routes walked out of the SSP’s office with an unexpected resolve; to abandon crime and attempt a life of dignity. The transition was not instant, but it was real. Under police monitoring and community engagement, Bablu began rebuilding his life piece by piece.
The turning point arrived when he decided to open a small tea and snack stall along the Chhattisgarh–Jharkhand border. The place where Operation Shankhnaad against cattle trafficking had originally intensified was now the site of Bablu’s new beginning. He named it Bablu Shankh Dhaba, a symbolic nod to the very operation that brought his criminal run to an end.
On Thursday, SSP Singh travelled to the spot to inaugurate the dhaba. He became its first customer, drinking a cup of tea and paying for it as villagers, traders and police personnel gathered around. The moment carried a quiet, powerful message; change is possible when society participates in it. People who once feared Bablu now clapped for him. For the first time in years, he felt seen not as a fugitive but as a man making an honest living.
The dhaba inauguration coincided with a community policing programme where several youths pledged to leave illegal activities and return to mainstream life. SSP Singh reminded them that crime offers no future and destroys families long before it destroys individuals.
Bablu’s transformation is now being spoken of across the district as an example of how policing rooted in dialogue and rehabilitation can reshape lives. He says he will never return to the world he left behind and wants his children to remember him not as a criminal but as a man who rebuilt himself with honesty.
His journey from fugitive to dhaba owner stands as a reminder that sometimes one conversation, offered at the right time, can alter the course of an entire life.
