Buggies & Bandooks: Bihar Bahubali Anant Singh’s Fetishes
Why Nitish Kumar “gifted” his strongman Anant Kumar to Lalu Prasad by having him arrested.
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It doesn’t happen often when an MLA is arrested by a government run by his own party. But when political equations change ahead of elections, as is now increasingly evident in Bihar, anything can happen.
Three-term JD(U) MLA Anant Singh was arrested in a 2014 kidnapping-murder case on June 24. His arrest is being seen as Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s attempt to further push his ‘clean, pro-development’ image. The bahubali who once helped Nitish wrest crucial constituencies from Lalu with his hold over the Bhumihar vote has lost political expediency for the “Grand Coalition” ahead of the October-November election.
In 2014 interview to Open magazine, Anant Singh boasted of having 150 police cases registered against him. But there is no way to verify that information considering there exists no known public record of his criminal antecedents. His election affidavits refer to a non-existing annexure for his criminal record. But in the last 20 years, he’s been accused of rape, murder, extortion, rigging elections and assaulting journalists.
Anant Singh is proud owner of four horses and an elephant. But his prize-winning horse Badal draws his custom-made buggy which is fitted with lights and a music system. He’s known to prefer the buggy over a silver Mercedes which was a first of its kind in his part of rural Bihar.
Incidentally, Anant Singh owned another horse, also called Badal. This horse, originally belonged to Lalu Prasad Yadav who’d refused to sell it to Singh. But the bahubali managed to acquire it through a decoy customer at the Sonepur cattle market in 2004.
He also had a pet python which he was forced to release after protests by animal rights activists.
In 2004, Anant Singh hit national headlines when he was seen brandishing an AK-47 during a New Year party. He is said to maintain an armoury of sophisticated weapons that were allegedly used during a five-hour long encounter between his men and Bihar’s Special Task Force in August 2004.
He fancies himself as the “Robin Hood of Mokama”, and runs a parallel government in his constituency about 100 kms from Patna. Anant Singh commands the Bhumihar vote (influential land owners) and his arrest is being seen as a gift to Lalu who isn’t his biggest fan.
Nitish is hoping to please the Yadavs (usually loyal to Lalu) with Anant Singh’s arrest since the upper-caste Bhumihars are expected to vote with the BJP this coming election.