Godfather Returns To Haunt Bihar

The don who ruled Siwan with guns, goons and impunity for years has come out after his protracted stay in prison, only to jolt the Nitish Kumar government in Bihar. The four-term former Rashtriya Janata Dal MP, who had unleashed a reign of terror in and around Siwan before the law caught up with him, wasted no time to train his guns on chief minister Nitish Kumar, under whose regime he had to languish behind bars for 11 years.

Stepping out of Bhagalpur Central Jail after being released on bail granted by the Patna High Court in the Rajiv Roshan murder case recently, the 50-year-old criminal-turned-politician said dismissively, “Nitish is the chief minister by circumstances.” In the same breath, he swore complete fealty to RJD president Laloo Prasad Yadav: “Everybody knows he is, was and will remain my leader. There is no confusion about it.”

Refusing to grant the status of a mass leader to the CM, he asserted that the Janata Dal (United) would not have won even 20 seats in the assembly elections last year without the alliance with RJD. “The leader of the largest party in the ruling coalition automatically becomes the chief minister, but the RJD let go of the convention...to prevent the BJP from grabbing power in Bihar,” he said. In the run-up to the assembly polls, the grand alliance comprising the JD(U), the RJD and the Congress had projected Nitish as its CM candidate. Shahabuddin was alluding to the fact that the RJD had won 80 seats, eight more than the JD(U), in the polls.

But Shahabuddin was not the only RJD leader to take a swipe at Nitish. The party’s vice-president, Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, backed the Siwan strongman’s contention, saying he, too, didn’t accept Nitish as leader of the alliance.

Nitish, however, refused to attach significance to Shahabuddin’s statements. “The people of Bihar have given me the mandate to provide good governance. There is no need to react to all remarks. We need not pay attention to who says what,” he said. Shahabuddin has a reason to be miffed with Nitish. It was under the previous NDA regime headed by him that the “terror of Siwan” lost much of his political clout. The setting up of special courts and speedy trials saw Shahabuddin convicted in seven cases, halting his flourishing political career.

After his conviction in a murder case in 2007, Shahabuddin was debarred from contesting any election. For somebody who had won two assembly polls and four Lok Sabha elections on the trot since 1990, it was a bitter pill to swallow. During his extended stay in prison, Shahabuddin had often accused the Nitish government of having framed him in false cases. Even though he admitted that his incarceration, as well as release on bail, was part of the judicial process, his potshots at Nitish were among his first statements once out of prison.

His attack on Nitish, however, was a provocation the JD(U) could not ignore. It deployed two senior ministers in the Nitish cabinet—Bijendra Prasad Yadav and Rajiv Ranjan Singh—to caution Laloo against RJD leaders who seem to be working against the spirit of the coalition. “Inappropriate remarks by RJD leaders are an insult to the people’s mandate...,” Yadav said. “I appeal to Laloo Prasad to restrain his leaders.” Singh, for his part, said his party did not expect any wisdom and good judgement from somebody who is out after 11 years in jail. “Who is Shahabuddin, after all?” he asked. “We do not take cognisance of him.”

The controversy prompted the JD(U) to reiterate, and offer assurance, that the rule of law would continue to prevail in Bihar. The party received immediate support from coalition partner Congress, which dared the RJD to opt out of the alliance if it had any problem over Nitish’s leadership. “The Congress will not tolerate any bid to tarnish the reputation of the chief minister from within the alliance,” Ashok Choudhary, Bihar Pradesh Congress Committee president and the state’s education minister said. “Nitish is not CM because of circumstances, but because of a well thought-out strategy.”

Apprehending trouble within the alliance, Laloo sought to downplay the controversy by asserting that Nitish was its undisputed leader. “There is no threat to the coalition,” he said. “As a big brother, I am the fire tender that is meant to put out any spark of fire within the alliance.”

Promising to talk to alliance partners who were upset at the turn of events, the RJD president, nevertheless, defended Shahabuddin. “He has made no derogatory remarks against anyone. What is wrong if he has called me his leader,” he asked. “He is, after all, a member of RJD.”

Laloo’s defence of his staunch loyalist was not unexpected. Even after Shahabuddin’s conviction in seven criminal cases, including two murders, over the past nine years, he remained a member of RJD’s national executive, its apex decision-making body. And after he was disqualified from contesting polls, Laloo gave the party ticket from the Siwan Lok Sabha seat in the last two general elections to his wife, Hena Shahab, though she lost both times.

BJP activists protesting the don’s release burn effigies of Laloo, Nitish

Photograph by PTI

Apparently, Shahabuddin retained his clout within the RJD not because of his muscle power but due to his perceived influence on a section of minority voters, especially youngsters, in and outside Siwan. The party top brass believed he had played a key role in helping Laloo consolidate the RJD’s Muslim-Yadav votebank over the years. His importance in the party could be gauged from the fact that Abdul Ghafoor, a senior RJD minister in the Nitish government, paid a courtesy visit to Shahabuddin earlier this year in Siwan jail. The picture of the minister sharing snacks with the convicted prisoner in the chamber of the jail superintendent went viral and embarrassed the Nitish government.

The Opposition believes that the Nitish government, under pressure from the RJD, had engineered Shahabuddin’s bail in the Roshan killing case. “The man who was not allowed by the previous NDA government to come out of jail for years is now a free bird,” senior BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi rues.

Suspecting a deep-rooted conspiracy, Sushil said that trials against Shahabuddin in all cases except one had stopped for the past three years, which helped his cause. “Shahabuddin had moved the Siwan court three years ago under the Legal Aid Authority Act, pleading for the appointment of a lawyer on his behalf, claiming he was not in a financial position to afford anybody to fight his case,” he says. “Even though his wife had declared her assets to be worth Rs 8-9 crore in the affidavit filed with her nomination papers in the 2009 general elections, he got a lawyer of his choice. When the Siwan district administration challenged the order, the Patna High Court stayed it and directed authorities to ensure Shahabuddin’s presence in the court. But the copy of the same order, which was sent through registered post, was not delivered to the accused for the past three years, even though he was lodged in the jail,” alleges Sushil. “The resultant delay in the commencement of trial in the Roshan killing case, despite the high court directive in February this year to conclude it in three months, helped him obtain bail.”

The former deputy chief minister also alleged that the state government refrained from engaging a senior lawyer to oppose Shahabuddin’s bail petition. Sushil firmly believes Shahabuddin’s release would bring back the reign of terror in Bihar.

Sushil’s fears resonate within the families which had incurred the wrath of the ‘bahubali’ (strongman) leader in the past. In 2004, Satish Raj and Girish Raj, sons of a Siwan-based businessman Chandrakeshwar Prasad, were drenched in acid before being killed over a land dispute between the victims’ family and one of Shahabuddin’s accomplices. Ten years later, their brother Rajiv Roshan, the only witness in the case who had managed to escape, was gunned down three days before he was to depose in the court in the same case.

Prasad, 79, believes that terror has already returned to Siwan following the release of Shahabuddin. “People are living in fear now. I am afraid I can be Shahabuddin’s next target,” says Prasad, who lives with his wife Kalawati Devi and their surviving physically challenged son. “I had never thought he would get my third son murdered after killing two of my sons earlier,” he says.

The hapless parents, who had hoped for a death sentence for Shahabuddin, said they had no means to carry on with the prolonged legal battle to ensure justice for their three slain children. They had found some solace when Shahabuddin was awarded life imprisonment in the case last year, but his release on bail has demoralised the elderly couple.

However, the Prasads have a ray of hope—prominent lawyer Prashant Bhushan has volunteered to oppose Shahabuddin’s bail in the Supreme Court.

Asha Ranjan, the wife of slain Siwan journalist Rajdeo Ranjan, is also scared. Fearing a threat to her family from the RJD leader, she has sought security from the police. Suspecting the involvement of Shahabuddin, she met Union home minister Rajnath Singh to help initiate a CBI probe into the killing of her husband, who was shot dead in May this year. The presence of Mohammed Kaif, the absconding prime suspect in the case, outside the Bhagalpur Jail during a welcome procession organised to celebrate Shahabuddin’s release has aggravated her fears.

Shahabuddin has been convicted in seven cases so far, and has managed to get bail in all of them from the Patna High Court. Before he got bail in the Roshan murder case this month, the HC had granted him bail in the acid killings case in March this year.

In 2007, Shahabuddin was convicted for the abduction and killing of CPI(ML) worker Chhotelal Gupta. He was also handed a sentence of 10 years’ rigorous imprisonment in two other cases soon thereafter: one for attacking the then SP of Siwan, Sanjeev Kumar Singhal, and another for recovery of illegal arms from his Pratappur house.

Besides, Shahabuddin was also sentenced to a three-year jail term in a case of vehicle theft, two years in a case of kidnapping of a trader and a one-year term for an assault on the station house officer of Ziradei police station. He remains an accused in some 20 other cases.

Shahabuddin, however, remains unfazed, and dismisses all criminal cases against him as part of a political conspiracy. Even after spending 11 years in jail, he is in no mood to refurbish his image. “This is the image that people have accepted for the past 26 years,” he said nonchalantly. “Why should I try to change it?”

Shahabuddin said he did not meet supporters for more than ten years during his incarceration, but still received overwhelming sympathy from them. If one was present on the day he was released, it doesn’t seem like an empty boast. Hundreds of people lined up along the roads to welcome him back when he returned to Pratappur village after 13 years. Prior to his arrest in 2005, the district administration had externed him from Siwan for two years in 2003, which had deprived him of the seigneurial act of resolving local problems at an open court at his village mansion, modestly named White House. With supporters making a beeline again for his house to seek favours, the queue is likely to get longer, unless Nitish has other ideas.

Mohammad Shahabuddin, who loved to project himself as a local Robin Hood, may have cooled his heels in jail for 11 years. His return to Siwan shows how little things have changed.

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Side Arms Of The Law

Shahabuddin was in jail for nearly 11 years from Nov 2005 to Sept 2016. He was granted bail in all the cases.