Crimes Rise In Nitish’s Home

Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar may have earned compliments for his administration’s zero-tolerance policy towards crime in his previous three terms—closing the insulting Jungle Raj repeat-phrase that defined the state before his rule. But his latest tenure has thrown up a big challenge on the law and order front. A spate of crimes—murder, abduction, looting and robbery—appears to have caught his administration unawares within days of him taking the reins again after the state elections this autumn that the JD(U)-BJP combine won after a close fight. Lawlessness in Bihar, right from the state capital to mofussil towns, stares in Nitish’s face. It has forced him to chair as many as three meetings to review the law and order in quick succession. Without mincing words, he told the cops to either pull up their socks or face action. The chief minister has more than one reason to worry about the crime graph moving up soon after the elections.

In the past few days, armed outlaws shot dead a woman schoolteacher, firing into her eye when she resisted a robbery in central Patna. A resident of Dehri-on-Sone, she had come to celebrate her first wedding anniversary with her husband. In another case, brothers Rakesh Kumar Gupta and Amit Kumar Gupta, both businessmen, disappeared mysteriously and the police have not been able to trace them even after a week. In Darbhanga, ornaments worth Rs 7 crore were looted from a jewellery shop. It was daytime robbery, not far from a police station. In Khagaria district, the murder of a JD(U) member and another from the RJD in quick succession embarrassed the government. There are more such crimes, which have alarmed the Opposition as well as leaders of the JD(U)-BJP alliance. Bihar BJP president and MP, Sanjay Jaiswal, and senior party legislator Sanjay Saraogi have expressed concern.

The Opposition called out the Nitish government, with RJD leader Tejashwi Prasad Yadav questioning the JD(U)-BJP’s silence on the matter. “Oh God, there is too much sushasan (good governance) in Bihar,” he tweeted, alluding to the NDA’s promise of a crime-free state during the polls. His mother and former chief minister Rabri Devi took a dig too, saying the self-confidence of the criminals and the CM was at an all-time high and low—in that order. Payback time for her since the JD(U)-BJP had lost no opportunity in pointing to the crime run in the state during Lalu Prasad and Rabri Devi’s rule—that critics call the Jungle Raj—before Nitish came to power in 2005. The RJD also sniffs a BJP political gambit in the recent rise in criminal activities. “The CM holds the home portfolio, which the BJP is eyeing. But it could not get because Nitish’s refuses to forego,” says party spokesman Mrityunjay Tiwari.

The JD(U) hits back with a jibe by party spokesman Neeraj Kumar: “Tejashwi is abodh (innocent kid). He won’t understand the difference between Jungle Raj (lawless rule) and Mangal Raj (peaceful rule),” he says. Neeraj alleges that on July 17, 1997, the Patna High Court used the term Jungle Raj for the RJD government and followed it up on August 5. Nitish restored law and order, his party reprises, but the CM cannot afford to rest on his laurels.