How Bihar's Politician Dons Are Losing Their Sting Under Nitish Kumar's Vigil

In a world where crime and politics cross paths frequently, Bihar is often a mirror image of neighbouring Uttar Pradesh. Early in July, when eight UP cops were killed in an ambush by notorious don Vikas Dubey—who was himself gunned down recently—in Kanpur, it brought back chilling memories of a similar incident, not too long ago. Back in March 2001, police team of Siwan in Bihar, led by district police chief Bachchu Singh Meena, had undertaken a similar operation to Pratappur village to nab Mohammad Shahabuddin, a don-turned-RJD parliamentarian with a long history of crimes against his name. He is now serving a jail term since 2005.

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In a gun battle that followed, ten people, including two policemen, were killed. The immediate provocation to raid the village may have been an assault on a sub-divisional police officer by the controversial MP in full public view, but it was widely construed as a collective outburst of pent-up anger of the local cops over the contemptuous way he had been treating the force.

Five years before that incident, Shahabuddin—then a Janata Dal (there was no RJD then) MLA from Ziradei constituency—had ordered a murderous attack on the then police superintendent, S.P. Singhal, who was investigating a complaint against the politician during the 1996 parliamentary elections.  But Shahabuddin always got away. Though the police recovered a cache of arms, including AK-47s, from his village house during the raid, they failed to apprehend Shahabuddin, who vowed to kill the SP “even if I have to chase him all the way to Rajasthan (the cop’s native state)”. The clout of the MP, still in his early thirties then, could be gauged by the way the erstwhile Rabri Devi government chose to transfer all the senior district officials, including Meena, only a day after the raid.

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Shahabuddin began his political career as an independent legislator in 1990 after gaining notoriety with a slew of criminal acts in 1980s. He soon caught the eye of the then chief minister Laloo Prasad Yadav, and was fielded as a ruling party candidate in the 1995 assembly polls. From 1996 to 2004, he won four parliamentary elections on the trot, lording it over Siwan like his personal fiefdom. In spite of being named, at regular intervals, in several high-profile cases of extortion, kidnapping and killings, he ran a vast crime syndicate virtually at will like nobody else before him, with its network spread across several states and beyond. With a powerful don like him in the saddle, enjoying unrestricted access to the corridors of power it was hardly surprising for Bihar to earn the dubious distinction of the veritable capital of gang lords.

Not any longer, though. With the rise and fall of the likes of Vikas Dubey, the focus has shifted to UP and elsewhere. In what were once the badlands of Bihar, guns of the gang lords have fallen silent with the long arm of the law gradually catching up with Shahabuddin and others of his ilk in the past 15 years. Thanks to unabashed political patronage, bahubalis such as Shahabuddin, Anand Mohan, Surajbhan Singh, Sunil Pandey, Pappu Yadav, Munna Shukla, Satish Pandey, Manoranjan Singh Dhumal, Rama Singh, Rajan Tiwari, Anant Singh, Ranvir Yadav, Butan Yadav, Awdhesh Mandal, Ritlal Yadav et al had a field day for long in their respective pocket boroughs. But the setting up of fast-track courts to facilitate speedy trials to dispose of long-pending criminal cases by the Nitish Kumar government in 2006 proved to be their nemesis, as it led to conviction and subsequent disqualification of many a don-turned-politician from contesting the elections. The resultant loss of political clout, which they had managed to grab by virtue of muscle and money power, left their wings clipped. Now, they are either cooling their heels in the jail or have become political pariahs for most of the parties.

Take the case of Shahabuddin, for instance. Except for a brief period when he was released on bail in 2016, he has been languishing in prison since 2005. Currently lodged in Tihar jail, he has been convicted in multiple cases one after another. In 2007, he was sentenced to life for the kidnapping and killing of Chhotelal Gupta, a CPI-ML worker, following an attack on the office of the Left party in Siwan in 1998. In 2015, he was awarded another life sentence for the brutal killing of two brothers, who were doused in acid before being gunned down. Another brother, who witnessed the gory crime before escaping from the scene, was shot dead too, in 2014, three days before he was to depose in the case. In between, he was given rigorous imprisonment for ten years in 2007 for a murderous attack on district police chief Singhal in 1996. A year later, a similar quantum of punishment was awarded to him for seizure of sophisticated weapons, including Pakistan-made automatic rifles meant for use by the army only, from his house in another raid in 2005. The list of his convictions in such cases is long and so is the number of cases still in the trial stage.

Looking at his fate now, it appears difficult to believe that he is the same don, who had once single-handedly challenged the entire state police force, which could not take any action against him despite preparing a voluminous dossier on him during the tenure of DGP D.P. Ojha, which had, among other things, reportedly established his links not only with a Kashmiri terror organisation but also allegedly with the ISI and Dawood Ibrahim.

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Former top cop Manoje Nath believes that the strategic use of fear as a political tool has always been there in Bihar in some form or the other but it became the seminal part of political campaigning during the heyday of Mandal-masjid politics in the 1990s.

“Since fear played—and still plays—such a dominant role in contemporary politics, the marriage of crime and politics became the most natural alliance,” points out the 1973-batch IPS officer, who retired as DG (Homeguards) in Bihar. “Those who helped garner votes were rewarded amply and openly. They no longer stole in the corridors of power through the backdoor. They did not flit about like ghostly shadows in the darkness but strutted around in their new plumes of influence and immunity.”

In those days, Shahabuddin was not alone in having had the privileges of influence and immunity. There were other bahubalis with criminal antecedents who used their muscle power to make the most in politics. Known to be the Robin Hood of the Kosi belt, Anand Mohan, for one, was an influential strongman who floated his own political outfit called Bihar People’s Party. But his conviction in the Gopalganj DM G Krishnaiyyah lynching case cut short his political journey. Accused of instigating a mob he was leading to attack the DM who was passing by in Muzaffarpur district in 1994, Mohan was awarded life term in 2005 by a lower court, which was subsequently upheld by the high court and the Supreme Court. Singh has since written a few books in jail but is still awaiting his release.

Five-term MP Pappu Yadav, another bahubali from Kosi belt, was convicted by the district court in the 1998 killing of CPM legislator Ajit Sarkar, but he was acquitted later by the high court, which helped him bounce back in the state politics after spending years behind the bars. He has since shunned his don avatar and spends much of his time with social work in the state.  

There were others like Surajbhan Singh, the don from the Mokama area, who made a successful entry into politics by winning the Lok Sabha election on an LJP ticket but he, too, was disqualified to contest the polls after being awarded life-term in a murder case. Many of them tried to cling on to power by fielding their wives as proxy candidates in the elections but only a few like Surajbhan succeeded. Shahabuddin’s wife lost the parliamentary polls three times in a row since 2009.    

It was not as though the Nitish Kumar regime did not have affiliations with any don. The JD-U has had a handful of bahubali legislators in its ranks, but none of them seemed to have the kind of immunity from the law which some of their predecessor enjoyed previously. Nitish Kumar, to his credit, chose to let the law take its own course and refused to interfere in the investigation of any case involving his party legislators. Consequently, many high-profile bahubalis such Sunil Pandey and Anant Singh fell out with him and quit his party.

The RJD, however, insists that the Nitish government has no moral right to talk about the jungle raj during the 15 years of Laloo-Prasad-Rabri Devi rule because it had come to power with the help of none other than bahubalis. “A perception was created about lawlessness during the RJD rule but what about the NDA rule? Even after its 15 years’ reign, Bihar is on top of the crime graph in the country as per the data of the National Crime Records Bureau,” says RJD spokesperson Mritunjay Tiwari. “AK-47s are still being brandished openly in Bihar. If RJD’s reign was jungle raj, pray, what should we call the Nitish regime? A maha-jungle raj?”

Tiwari says that RJD leader Tejashwi Prasad Yadav has already apologised to the people of Bihar for any mistake or lapse committed during the party’s reign. “The people of Bihar have punished our party by keeping it out of power for 15 years but the Nitish government will have to explain what it has done during its tenure, except 55 scams,” he says. “They will have to give an account of their achievements instead of merely finding fault with our regime.”

The NDA, however, says that there is no denying the fact that Nitish has rid Bihar of the reign of terror unleashed by the mafia dons of all hues. “Such elements have retreated into background but they have covertly and not-so-covertly aligned with the political forces opposed to the chief minister,” says BJP spokesman Nikhil Anand. “Our government has been promoting good governance and that is why the bahubalis are not flexing their muscle in society at the moment, but the RJD appears to be co-opting such forces, from liquor mafia and sand mafia to land and mining mafia. Are they trying to return to power with the foundation of such forces?”

Anand says that the voters in the coming elections need to keep a tab on such ele­ments and their hobnobbing with the Opposition. “Bihar cannot afford to slip back to the era of bahubalis and Nitish-ji remains the best bet to keep such forces in abeyance in Bihar in future as well.”