Prashant Kishor Declares War, Threatens Exposes Against JDU And BJP Leaders

Nearly thirty years after her alleged rape and murder, 22-year-old Shilpi Jain is once again in the news with Prashant Kishor, founder of Jan Suraaj Party, bringing up her case to slam the Nitish-Kumar-led government for shielding the politician from corruption and crime charges.

At a press conference on September 29, Kishor alleged BJP’s Deputy CM Samrat Chaudhary forged his age certificate in a 1995 murder case, claiming he was a minor when he was 25.

Kishor linked Chaudhary and Sadhu Yadav to the 1999 Shilpi-Gautam case and accused JD(U) and RJD of shielding crime.

In 1999, 22-year-old Shilpi Jain appeared to be living a charmed life. She won the Miss Patna award at the age of 19, and she was dating Gautam Singh, the son of a well-off, politically connected family. Then, on one muggy July night, all of that changed when Jain and Singh’s corpses were found in a car parked in the MLA Quarters in Patna.

That year, Patna was shocked to discover two dead bodies, those of Jain and Singh, in a Maruti Zen that was parked in a garage in MLA Quarter No. 12, Fraser Road. The case has since become notorious, capturing the country and the state’s imagination due to the mysterious and compromising circumstances in which the bodies were found.

The garage in the MLA Quarters where their bodies were found was linked to Sadhu Yadav, an MLA connected to Bihar’s ruling elite at the time. This incident became more than a crime; in Patna’s eyes, it was a symbol of the elite's corruption and impunity. In Outlook’s August 1, 2025, issue Jungle Raj, the magazine editor also recalled Jain’s case as a prime example of the era.

“I lived through those times. Of chaos and gunshots, kidnappings and a lot of fear. It was 1999 when my school senior Shilpi Jain’s semi-naked body was found in a car in Patna,” writes Chinki Sinha.

In the late 1990s, Bihar was under what critics call 'Jungle Raj', a phase characterised by lawlessness, elite impunity, political nepotism, and governance failures. At the time, Bihar was ruled by Lalu Prasad Yadav and his political circle, and many of them, including Yadav’s family and extended connections, were perceived as being above the law and justice. Jain’s case brought all this into focus.

From the very first day, the investigation was mired in confusion. First, the police declared it a case of suicide before a full viscera report was done. The cops said the couple died of carbon monoxide poisoning, saying that the couple likely locked themselves inside the car and asphyxiated. The forensic report, when it came, did not support the cops’ conclusion. The post-mortem report revealed that Jain had been sexually assaulted by more than one person; semen stains found on the crime scene pointed to a more sinister explanation than what the police had posited by the police.

When, a month after the incident, public outrage over the botched investigation in the matter did not subside, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) took over in July. The CBI sent bodily samples of the victims for DNA testing and found that multiple persons were involved in the rape and murder of Jain and Singh. The CBI sought a DNA sample from Sadhu Yadav, but he allegedly refused to provide it.

However, in 2003, the CBI filed its final report before a court in Patna. The premier investigating agency concluded that there was no evidence of murder or rape, and that this had been a case of double suicide. The CBI report dismissed the semen stains found at the crime scene as sweat, and critics say other forensic evidences were downplayed or deemed inconclusive.

Shilpi’s family, however, has refused to accept this report as final. Her brother Prashant Jain has demanded a reopening of her case. In 2006, as Jain was pushing for a fresh investigation, he was allegedly kidnapped from his house. Later, he was released but never pursued the case publicly again.

The Jain case caught Bihar’s imagination at the time because it involved everything that people considered wrong with jungle raj—a heinous crime perceived as being covered up to shield a powerful politician, with even the CBI not seen as above the politics.

With Bihar’s assembly elections coming up next month, Mohamed Asghar Khan wrote on the state’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voter rolls and how it has sparked whispers of disenfranchisement amid civic desire to keep the ‘ghuspethiya’ away.

Also in the issue, Pragya Singh delves into the lives of women in Bihar. First, looking at their safety and agency through the lens of witchcraft allegations, and then through their voting practices. “Voting is not allegiance. It’s leverage—shaped in community kitchens, panchayat meetings, and migrant households where survival itself is political,” Singh writes.

For many in Bihar, the case is not closed. It has become a touchstone, cited in political speeches, as well as in television and web series like Maharani 2, which depicts the incident as an example of impunity for MLAs and those with political clout. And in that sense, it remains emblematic of what “Jungle Raj” came to mean: a time when law was pliant, when the powerless were exposed, and when voices crying for justice were too often drowned out.