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After lunch, a guide took us to the bandits' staging camp at Gherora. Despite the 105° heat, the village was thronged with people who had come to see the dacoits and the surrender ceremonies. In a tiny room atop one of the houses we found Madho Singh. A tall, lithe figure, he was dressed in a police uniform and carried an automatic rifle. Asked if he had qualms about surrendering, Madho Singh said: "Whatever we say we'll do, we go ahead with it, even if it means death for us. Sometimes we are scared of jail, but we remember that our great national leaders underwent the same incarceration. I tell the rebels who are scared of jail to think of it as a house you have rented. You don't even have to pay the rent." Almost shyly, Madho Singh admitted that he liked to write poetry and planned to write a book on the Chambal Valley in prison.
The next morning, before a crowd of 10,000, Madho Singh mounted the raised public platform, placed his weapon at the feet of Narayan and asked the crowd for forgiveness. His mustache was gone and so was the police uniform. Then he touched the feet of the police chief, and surrendered. At the end of the day, 167 dacoits were in jail. Said Narayan: "They are all like children."
The Indian government is reluctant to reveal what kind of deal it made with the bandits, but it is believed to have promised commutation of all death sentences the courts might hand down. It will also assume care of dacoit families and provide scholarships for their children. At week's end, New Delhi indicated that it would undertake a $170 million redevelopment program for the Chambal Valley, aimed at countering the desperate poverty that led many of the dacoits to lives of violence.