Book Excerpt| Rajesh Singh's Baahubalis of Indian Politics: From Bullet to Ballot

Excerpted from ‘Baahubalis of Indian Politics: From Bullet to Ballot’ with permission from Rupa Publications.

Saheb of Siwan: Mohammad Shahabuddin

It is rare, even by the standards set by musclemen– politicians, for a baahubali or his henchmen to threaten judges, go around slapping police personnel and murdering ordinary citizens because they might have voted contrary to his expectations. In this respect, Mohammad Shahabuddin has set a record of sorts. The don of Siwan in Bihar, he is now incarcerated for life in a case of murder¹.

His patrons are out of power in the state. In his heyday during the reign of Lalu Prasad Yadav’s RJD, he was supreme. A report by the People’s Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL) in 2001 made the following observation: Human rights group PUCL had observed, ‘The patronage and de facto immunity from legal action offered to him by the RJD government gradually made him a law unto himself, giving him an aura of invincibility. Since the police turned a blind eye to his criminal activities and allowed him to turn Siwan district into his fiefdom where his fiat ran, Shahabuddin’s reign of terror was so complete that nobody dared depose against him in cases in which he was an accused.’

The civil rights group was not exaggerating. His might was evident, not only when he was free but also while he was under arrest.

In 2004, when still an MP representing the RJD and also then charged with the murder of a political rival, Shahabuddin was supposed to have been behind bars, ‘but he had procured a sick certificate’². While this is not unusual for politicians who suddenly report acute sickness when they are arrested, his stay in the hospital was beyond the ordinary. Shahabuddin occupied the AIDS ward of the Siwan district hospital, two floors of a new block that he had funded with his constituency allocation. A plaque at the entrance attested his sponsorship... Shahabuddin didn’t have AIDS; he only had entitlement over the AIDS ward³. If this was irregular, consider the following:

He had two private rooms on the first floor. His men—‘my staff ’—had settled into what would have been single rooms for AIDS patients. He held court every day in the main hall. He sat in a wrought iron chair with a high throne-like back and faced two rows of benches divided by an aisle not unlike pews in a chapel. There never seemed any dearth of petitioners. Little chits would be passed on from the benches and a flunkey would whisper its contents to the don while he played eenie-meenie with a fistful of cloves and cardamoms. When he thought fit, he picked up his cellphone and called, never bothering to identify himself, always sure of compliance: the district magistrate, the police boss, the revenue officer, the kutchehry registrar. ‘Hum bol rahe hain...’ was how he began⁴.

The fortunate ones had their grievances attended to, the others got their chits back with the unsaid message that the don was not inclined at that point in time to entertain them; they could try their luck another time.

Unlike some other dons, Shahabuddin was himself a sharpshooter. He boasted about it privately, ‘A single shot, a shooter should not require more than that.⁵’ But he could also amaze people with monologues on spirituality and philosophy. Santosh Singh says, ‘I got to talk to Mohammad Shahabuddin through the mobile phone of a common acquaintance sometime in 2006... Shahabuddin had started the conversation with “namaste” and discussed Ramayana, Mahabharata and Quran and Gita’s message of karma.⁶’

This is a game that musclemen often play to present a benign image of themselves. Shahabuddin seems to have missed out on the irony of quoting the Gita and its message, since it was his karma that landed him in jail. Of his many exploits, there is one that stands out for its scale of tragedy. The story involves Chandrakeshwar Prasad, alias Chanda babu, a wholesale provision store owner in Siwan, and it demonstrates not just the ‘Siwan Sultan’s’ clout but also his ruthlessness.

Sometime in 1996, Chanda babu purchased a house and seven shops in the same building, from one Ramnath Gaur. The change of ownership had led six of the shopkeepers to vacate their shops, but one, who had rented it from its previous owner, held out despite Chanda Babu’s repeated requests. Faced with no alternative, Chanda babu locked the shop and took it in his possession. Shahabuddin’s henchmen, smelling an opportunity, approached Chanda babu and began to demand large sums of money to persuade the obstinate tenant to vacate. The businessman expressed his inability to cough up the amount.

He, however, agreed to pay a reasonable sum he could afford. Things dragged on for years, with pressure from the don’s men on Chanda babu continuing to increase. Perhaps one reason why the goons were unrelenting was because they knew Chanda babu had a flourishing wholesale business, and that there was no reason why he could not part with the amount they were demanding. Besides, there was Shahabuddin’s prestige at stake.

16 August 2004 was the day when everything changed for the wholesaler, who was away in Patna then. His son Satish was in one of the shops and the other son Rajiv was attending to the adjacent shop (the third brother Girish too was at the scene of the crime). A bunch of people owing allegiance to Shahabuddin approached Satish and demanded 2,00,000 as protection money. When the ‘request’ was turned down, the don’s henchmen pounced on the ‘offender’ and beat him up.

NOTES:

1. Press Trust of India, ‘Top Court Upholds Mohammad Shahabuddin’s Life Term in Double Murder Case’, NDTV, 30 October 2018, Accessed on 6 March 2020, https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/ top-court-upholds-mohammad-shahabuddins-life-term-in-double- murder-case-1940215.

2. Sankarshan Thakur, Single Man: The Life & Times of Nitish Kumar of Bihar (India: HarperCollins Publishers, 2014).

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

6. Santosh Singh, Ruled or Misruled: Story and Destiny of Bihar (India: Bloomsbury, 2015).

(Rajesh Singh is the author of the books ‘Baahubalis of Indian Politics’ and ‘Portraits of Hindutva: From Harappa to Ayodhya’. He is an analyst of politics and public affairs)