What's In A Name? Ask This 'Bahubali' MLA From Bihar

A historysheeter-turned-legislator from Bihar who spent many years in jail on charges of murder, loot, kidnapping, land grab and extortion before winning the last year's state assembly election is a harried man these days. He is desperately trying to change his bahubali image but extortionists are still making threatening calls to people demanding money in his name.

Rit Lal Yadav, the Rashtriya Janata Dal MLA from Danapur assembly constituency on the outskirts of Patna, claims to have no clue whatsoever about the unidentified criminals, who are masquerading him on phone. He intends to apprise Chief minister Nitish Kumar and Vidhan Sabha Speaker Vijay Kumar Sinha about it and seek their guidance before filing an FIR.

“People have been receiving calls from extortionists who are demanding huge amounts of money in my name,” says the gangster-turned-legislator. “Some claim to be my relatives while others pretend to be just myself on phone.”

Rit Lal says that he would not have come to know about it had some victims not contacted him. “One of them was told to cough up Rs 15 lakh by somebody claiming to be speaking on my behalf. When he did not pay till the deadline given to him, he received another threatening call from the same person. This time, he was made to speak directly to someone else who identified himself as Vidhayak-ji (MLA) of Danapur,” he says.

Rit Lal has appealed to people not to fall prey to such calls and should get in touch with him immediately if they receive any extortion demand in his name in the future.

Ironically, it was Rit Lal himself, who was long accused of being the biggest extortionist in and around Patna. Once he was charged with having demanded extortion from some contractors who were bidding for railway tenders in the Danapur division of the East-central railway. He was still in jail at the time.

Once known as the “terror of Danapur” for his alleged criminal activities, he was a former mukhiya and a former MLC before he won the assembly polls in November last year on the RJD ticket. He defeated Asha Sinha, a four-term BJP legislator, whose husband Satya Narayan Sinha was gunned down in 2003. Rit Lal, the main accused, later spent many years in jail in connection with the murder case.

Besides, he was named in more than 30 other criminal cases of murder, loot, land grab, extortion, etc. He remained an absconder for several years before he decided to surrender, ahead of 2010 assembly polls to try his luck in mainstream politics.

Currently out of jail on bail, Rit Lal contested and won the Bihar Legislative Council polls as an independent while he was still in jail in 2015. Ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, he was appointed RJD’s general secretary by party president Lalu Prasad Yadav after he threatened to contest against Lalu’s daughter Misa Bharti from Patliputra parliamentary seat. A few years ago, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) had confiscated his movable and immovable property worth crores of rupees.

Now, he apparently wants to leave his dubious past behind but his name, thanks to his criminal antecedents, still comes in handy for the extortionists to scare people and make a fast buck in Bihar.