“Na kisi se dosti, na kisi se dushmani, kanoon apna kaam karega. (Law will take its own course in my regime, irrespective of friendship or enemity).” This is exactly what Nitish Kumar said soon after his victory when the media lent its voice to BJP’s apprehension of the ‘return of jungle raj’ in Bihar.
One month down the line, Nitish has proved he won’t meddle in legal matters and allow the law to take its own course even if the case is related to his own party’s lawmaker or someone from his alliance partner, the RJD.
On Monday, a Janata Dal (United) MLA, Ramesh Singh Kushwaha, who won the Assembly elections in November from Ziradei in Siwan, was sent to jail in a murder case.
Kushwaha, A Party Hopper
The case dates back to 1997 in which a Janata Dal leader Sheoji Dubey was killed and Kushwaha was named as one of the accused. Kushwaha, then a CPI (ML) leader, had been evading arrest since then. Later, he joined Lalu’s RJD, before dumping him and joining hands with Upendra Kushwaha’s Rashtriya Lok Samata Party.
On the eve of Bihar Assembly elections, he shifted his allegiance to Nitish Kumar and became a JD(U) candidate from Ziradei, the birth place of Dr Rajendra Prasad. Kushwaha won from the constituency which was earlier represented by Siwan terror Md Shahabuddin in the 90s.
Aware of the case pending against him, Kushwaha on 14 December surrendered before the chief judicial magistrate (CJM) Arvind Singh, who remanded him to 14 days’ judicial custody.
Ziradei Constituency, Synonymous with Notoriety
Call it a coincidence, Ziradei in Siwan, which gave India its first President, has, of late, been in the news for all the wrong reasons. Ziradei’s former MLA, Md Shahabuddin, who later became RJD MP from Siwan in 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2004, was sentenced to life imprisonment in a double murder case last week.
This was one of the most gruesome cases involving the abduction and killing of three sons of a Siwan-based trader Chandeshwar Prasad in 2004. The then RJD MP’s henchmen reportedly abducted the three brothers in a land dispute case and poured acid on two of them.
.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fmt=webp&width=720)
The two brothers Girish and Satish died instantly, while the third one Rajiv Roshan – the sole witness to the gruesome murder – managed to escape from Shahabuddin’s ancestral village in Pratappur. He was, however, killed allegedly by Shahabuddin’s men in 2014.
Shahabuddin Convicted In Another Case
Eleven years down the line, the special court on 11 December, 2015 sentenced the already incarcerated former parliamentarian to life imprisonment.
The special court judge Ajay Kumar Srivastava held Shahabuddin guilty in connection with the acid attack and subsequent murder of the two brothers. The court held the former MP, whose name still evokes terror in Siwan, guilty under Sections 302 (murder), 364 A (kidnapping with the intention of murder), 201 (efforts to wipe out evidence) and 120 B (conspiracy for murder).
This was the third case in which the jailed ex-MP has been convicted.
So, all those who earlier expressed their apprehension that Bihar may again become a lawless state once Lalu’s party was voted to power, should probably re-look at their prejudiced stand.
(The writer is a Bihar-based journalist)
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)