IPS officer Rajesh Pandey retired as IG of Bareilly Range in Uttar Pradesh in May 2022. Currently, he is the nodal officer of the Uttar Pradesh Expressways Industrial Development Authority (UPEIDA), a government agency responsible for development of expressways in the state.

He was among the founding members of the elite UP STF (Special Task Force) when it was set up to deal with organised crime in 1998 and the AntiTerrorism Squad (ATS) in 2009 for antiterror operations. He headed the electronic surveillance during Shriprakash Shukla operation and is credited with putting together the first surveillance unit for police.

He has been part of 70 police encounters so far. He has investigated major terrorist attacks in the state of U.P. He has been awarded the Indian Police Medals for Gallantry four times –in 1999, 2000, 2007 and 2016 – for Operation Bazooka, and for successfully interrogating the Faizabad and Varanasi terror attacks. Pandey went to the United Nations Peace Keeping Mission in Kosovo in 2008 and won the United Nations Medal for Peace Keeping.

He has written bestselling book 'वर्चस्व' (Amazon: https://amzn.in/d/bnFanPi) based on crimes and encounter of dreaded gangster Shriprakash Shukla. His latest book 'Badge and the Bullet' is now out (Amazon: https://amzn.in/d/0K5oQkL)

0:00 Gangs of Gorakhpur
3:57 Booth capturing as a service
6:53 Shriprakash Shukla’s Kundli Method
9:42 How he killed Lalu Yadav’s close aid
12:07 Shukla’s political ambitions
13:54 Shukla’s plan to kill Kalyan Singh
17:35 Kalyan Singh didn’t know about Shukla?
20:13 Cable business made him gangster
24:27 Why Shukla was different from other gangsters
29:07 Why 1990s was the era of gangsters
34:40 How Police tapped Shukla’s phone
38:40 Can police tap your phone?
42:25 How AK47 reached Uttar Pradesh
48:01 Characterless Shukla
54:18 Heights of characterlessness
56:07 UP STF was formed to catch Shukla
1:01:51 How UP ATS finished Indian Mujahideen
1:04:39 Mumbai underworld, UP gangsters alliance