Months On Run, Smuggler Arrested During Ritual To 'Fix Fate' In Ujjain

For months, Rajasthan Police chased him like a ghost. Raids were conducted, informers were activated, hideouts were checked and leads were followed across Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. But every time the police thought they were close, 37-year-old Rakesh Jat vanished.

The police were looking for a suspected drug kingpin. The drug kingpin, meanwhile, was looking for divine protection.

Rakesh Jat, an alleged interstate opium and poppy husk smuggler from Neemuch district in western Madhya Pradesh, was wanted in a 2023 narcotics case registered in Rajasthan's Jodhpur district. A reward of Rs 25,000 had been announced for his arrest. For nearly four months, Rajasthan's Anti-Narcotics Task Force had been trying to track him down, but he kept slipping away.

Then came the twist that turned the police operation into a real-life crime thriller. Rajasthan Police received specific intelligence that Rakesh had consulted an astrologer after becoming frustrated with constant police pressure and disruption to his illegal trade. The astrologer allegedly told him that his troubles were linked to Kaal Sarp Dosha in his horoscope and that he should perform special rituals in Ujjain, preferably near the Mahakal temple, to remove the obstacle.

The moment this input reached the police, the chase changed direction. A five-member team of Rajasthan ANTF was sent to Ujjain. But this was not a regular raid. There were no uniforms, no visible weapons, no police vehicles and no loud operation. The officers dressed up as ordinary pilgrims and entered the temple city like any other group of devotees.

For the next two days, the undercover team moved from one temple to another. They stood in queues, offered prayers and blended into the crowd of devotees. From the world-famous Mahakaleshwar Temple to smaller, lesser-known shrines in Ujjain, the team searched nearly 15 temples in 48 hours. Behind every folded hand was one mission find Rakesh Jat before he disappeared again.

Finally, at one of Ujjain's lesser-known temples, the police spotted him. Rakesh was allegedly sitting with priests, performing rituals for Kaal Sarp Dosh Nivaran. Mantras were being chanted, offerings were being made and the man who had evaded police for months was trying to change his fate. What he did not know was that fate had already arrived disguised as pilgrims.

As the rituals continued, the officers quietly moved in. There was no dramatic chase, no gunfire and no filmi fight sequence. The accused, who had slipped through multiple police raids across two states, was arrested from the very place where he had come seeking relief from his bad luck.

Police officials say Rakesh was not an ordinary carrier in the drug network. According to Rajasthan ANTF, he was allegedly one of the key aggregators of opium and poppy husk sourced from western Madhya Pradesh and supplied to smugglers in Rajasthan's Marwar region. His arrest, officials believe, could help expose deeper links in the interstate narcotics chain operating between Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.

Rakesh's background adds another layer to the story. Unlike many smugglers in the region who are school dropouts, he holds an ITI diploma from Chittorgarh. He was once involved in farming on his family's land in Neemuch district. Around a decade ago, he allegedly came in contact with a poppy contractor and gradually entered the narcotics trade.

A few years later, he was arrested by Madhya Pradesh Police in Neemuch in a major drug trafficking case and spent around 18 months in jail. Investigators say that jail term turned out to be a turning point. Inside prison, he allegedly came in contact with notorious drug smugglers from Rajasthan's Marwar region and later became an important supply link for them after his release.

In 2023, Balesar police station in Jodhpur Rural registered a case against him after one of four trucks allegedly carrying drugs from Madhya Pradesh to Rajasthan was seized. Since then, he had been on the run, and Rajasthan Police had declared a Rs 25,000 reward for information leading to his arrest.

The IG-Rajasthan ANTF Vikas Kumar said "Rakesh's arrest has helped us bust the genesis of opium and poppy husk supply to drug smugglers in Marwar region of Rajasthan, as he was the prime aggregator (he sourced poppy husk and opium from illegal cultivators in western MP) and supplied it to most of the drug smugglers in southwestern and western parts of Rajasthan. His arrest would help us in making further inroads into the inter-state drugs rackets operating between MP and Rajasthan."

The Ujjain arrest was part of Rajasthan ANTF's Operation Madmaneera. Interestingly, just a day before this operation, the same force had carried out another dramatic operation in Jharkhand under Operation Mandakan. There, police officers posed as railway civil engineers to arrest another wanted smuggler, Ankit Kumar Singh, who carried a Rs 30,000 bounty in a 2023 NDPS case.

In one operation, the police became pilgrims. In another, they became engineers. But the target remained the same the narcotics network spreading across states.

Rakesh Jat had come to Ujjain hoping to remove Kaal Sarp Dosha from his horoscope. Instead, he found Rajasthan Police waiting in the crowd. For months, he had escaped raids, surveillance and intelligence teams. But in the city of Mahakal, his run ended not on a highway or in a hideout, but inside a temple at the exact moment he was trying to rewrite his destiny.