In 1988, dust storms lapped about a hut in a barren agricultural land near Hariyasar village in Bikaner. Under the thatch, an infant battled for life, underweight and malnourished. He was a satmasiya, born prematurely within seven months, and his mother’s fourth and last child. His cousin would sprinkle water on the hut to protect him from the harsh summer. And the baby survived. 

But the summer heat continued to encroach on his home, even two decades later, when the baby had grown into a wiry frame, living in a rented room in Bikaner’s Rani Bazar. As a 5-foot-9-inch tall mobile technician with hazel eyes and a Tere Naam hairdo, he slogged on Sundays in a closed shop, using his nimble fingers to fix Qwerty phones; and his employer agreed to give him an air cooler. But when he tried to take it home, he was waylaid by two drunk clients. Using a Nokia 3250, he called a friend for help, who thrashed the attackers but also the mobile technician – for being too timid. 

But by the end of last year, the once restrained technician had metamorphosed into one of Rajasthan’s most wanted gangsters. “This is Rohit Godara speaking. I pumped 25 bullets in Raju Thehat (a gangster killed a few days earlier). The same way I will pump 50 into you. I won’t let you see 2023,” he told a Jaipur-based property dealer on the phone, asking for Rs 5 crore.

The infant who had survived Rajasthan’s harsh summer was now the Rajasthan pointsman for the pan-India crime network led by Lawrence Bishnoi – who has been in the news over the Sidhu Moose Wala murder and threats to Salman Khan. 

To understand this transformation, Newslaundry spoke to his current and former associates, the mobile technicians who worked with or under him, his family and police officers, and looked at a police dossier containing FIRs, chargesheets and police remarks running into hundreds of pages. This report is based on those accounts and claims.

Born Rawat Das Swami, his criminal dossier includes 22 cases with offences ranging from land grab, robbery, extortion, and at least five murders in Rajasthan and Punjab, including the recent on-camera killing of Sri Rashtriya Rajput Karni Sena chief Sukhdev Singh Gogamedi. 

Though Rohit continues to take to social media to influence teenagers and instil fear in his targets, he had fled to Dubai on a fake passport in June 2022. 

The same year in December, a red corner notice was issued against him with the Rajasthan police announcing a reward of Rs 1 lakh on any information leading to his arrest. This was just five years after he made it to Bikaner police’s list of 25 hardcore criminals.

This year, Rajasthan’s rising crime graph became part of many reports on governance and politics, turning into a poll plank in the recently-concluded assembly elections, and triggering legislation such as the law against organised crime passed in June. While forces across the political spectrum continued to blame each other for policing failures in the state, Rohit apparently eyed his share of the political pie. 

Before he fled abroad, he participated in Hindu Navvarsh (Hindu new year) rallies in Bikaner and Jodhpur, organised by RSS affiliates in April last year. 

But Bikaner City MLA Jethanand Vyas, former coordinator of Hindu Jagaran Manch, an RSS affiliate which organised the Bikaner rally, claimed no such invitation was sent to Rohit. VHP’s Jodhpur joint general secretary Mahendra Singh Rajpurohit echoed Vyas’s line. “We did not invite him. He was just one among four lakh people.”

The same month, Rohit shared the stage with Congress’s Govind Ram Meghwal, then state cabinet minister for disaster management and relief, at a public meeting to mark Bhimrao Ambedkar Jayanti at Sadul Club Ground in Bikaner, according to two sources. Meghwal had anchored the event, but asked if he had invited Rohit, he lashed out. “You are not a journalist but a gangster. You are someone's tool,” he said before hanging up. 

Rohit attended all these events with a cavalcade of vehicles.

Entry into the world of crime

Rohit of the late 2000s and early 2010s is a study in contrast. 

He was considered a “talented” workhorse for his employer Monu Modi. Once he acquired more skills as a technician, he opened two shops and a training institute in Bikaner’s mobile markets. But due to the long sitting hours, he used to complain of perennial muscle pain in his legs, as an employee and an owner, and would ask trainees to massage his legs at his training institute. “He could not run for long,” said a source who worked with him in the mobile shop. 

Pain or no pain, he has been on the run since last year. 

Rohit’s friends, family and gang members discuss his entry and rise in the world of easy money in “befores” and “afters”.