 "Bihar, Nitish Kumar, Lalu Prasad, Grand Alliance")
On December 26, at a review meeting of the road construction department in Patna, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar was busy instructing officials to make sure that the distance between Patna and any point in the state should not exceed five hours, even as news came in that two engineers in Darbhanga had been murdered. A heavy silence fell, and the meeting was over.
The two engineers - 45-year-old Mukesh Kumar Singh and 30-year-old Brajesh Kumar - were employees of Gurgaon-based C&C Construction and were part of a Rs 750-crore state highway project in the Darbhanga district. Two men on a motorcycle shot the engineers dead. It was reported that the police personnel who were earlier deployed at the site after the company received a ransom call were removed from the spot to guard against tension in a nearby area. The police admitted that the killings were linked to extortion demands.
By the end of the day, a station house officer had been suspended and the probe was handed over to a special task force (STF).
The incident has spread panic among construction companies, which are now demanding protection for their employees. On December 28, a group of 100 engineers in the Bhagalpur district submitted a memorandum to the inspector general of police in this regard.
It doesn't help matters that the body of another engineer, Ankit Jha, was found in the Vaishali district, 60 km from Patna, three days later. The 42-year-old was an engineer with Reliance Telecom.
Against this backdrop, the deteriorating law and order situation in Bihar has now become the biggest challenge to Kumar's credentials as a strict enforcer of law.
"Kumar began his rule with good intentions. The speedy trial mechanism ensured that criminals stay behind bars. However, the efforts seemed to be losing steam during his second tenure," says a former director general of police. "The yearly conviction rate fell from 12,000 in 2009-10 to 8,000 in 2013-14. In 2015, it further fell to 5,000-6,000. Since the grand alliance's [Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad] victory in the high-pitched state Assembly election, the government went into a honeymoon phase. This gave criminals a chance to be active again."
Organised crime and the response
The double murder has put the spotlight on Santosh Jha, who is lodged in Gaya central jail in connection with 40 criminal cases, including murder, extortion and landmine blasts. A police probe has reportedly revealed that Jha had demanded an amount of Rs 75 crore from the Gurgaon-based company.
According to the police, the engineers were killed by Mukesh Pathak - the right-hand man of Jha - and his three accomplices.
This is hardly the first extortion-related killing since the Janata Dal (United)-Rashtriya Janata Dal alliance rose to power in November 2015. In the same month, an electrical supervisor involved in a rural electrification project in Sheohar was killed for extortion. The main accused in this case is also Mukesh Pathak.
The police suspect that Jha's gang may be responsible for at least a dozen murders of engineers and contractors in the state and may have extorted more than Rs 100 crore from construction companies in the past 10 years.
"The organised crime in the state is still ruled by a few big names," said a senior police official. "However, since the regime change in the state a decade ago, most of them have taken the cover of legitimate businesses like hotels or real estate. The engineers were killed to consolidate the gang's position in the state to ensure that no company would dare to deny extortion to them."
The initial probe also gives a glimpse into the lacklustre attitude of the police. The district administration and senior police officials have accepted that the protection money was being demanded from company officials since August this year. Although security forces were deployed near the base camp, no FIR was filed in this regard.
Some analysts say that this incident has once again proved that there is a police-criminal nexus operating in the state, since the incident took place just hours after the security was withdrawn from the base camp.
The special investigating force that is probing the incident was set up to combat organised crime in the state. However, its track record is far from satisfactory. "Instead of being a special wing, the STF is considered as a shunting posting or for those who want desk jobs in Patna," said one source.
The STF has apprehended three of Santosh Jha's henchmen, but officials accept that Pathak and his accomplices may have fled to Nepal. The police are yet to release photographs or sketches of Pathak or his accomplices.
The aftermath
A dozen engineers have left the project site at Darbhanga. "The work has almost stopped," says B K Jha, chief project engineer of BSCC-C&C JV. "There is fear among the engineers; 12 of the 15 engineers have fled." He adds that more than 250 of 400 labourers have also left after the murders. The company has demanded complete security for its engineers and labourers - from their residence to the work site - before it will resume work.
It's not that these demands have been falling on deaf ears.
In a recent review meeting of the home department, Nitish Kumar expressed concern on the rising crime graph. "Tell me what do you need?" asked the chief minister in a stern voice. "All efforts must be made to eliminate organised crime. Take the murders in Darbhanga as a challenge and curb crime at all costs. I want results."
The victims' families, however, blame the state government for the incident. "Why were the policemen withdrawn?" asks one of the family members of Brajesh Kumar. "Who is responsible for this? They are hand in glove with the culprits. Otherwise, how could the criminals have known that the security had been withdrawn?"
Brajesh Kumar, a resident of the Rohtas district, was the family's sole breadwinner. Divya, his three-year-old daughter who celebrated her birthday with her father on December 20, has saved a piece of cake for her father because he had promised her that he would return on New Year's day. She doesn't know why her mother, Rita, and her grandmother, Reena Devi, are crying so much.
Meanwhile, the family of Mukesh Kumar Singh - a father of two - in Begusarai is devastated by the incident. He was the father of two teenage children. His son, Sonu, is angry. He doesn't know why his father was killed. His sister, Vaisnavi, has not eaten since the incident. Their mother, Vandana Devi, tries to be strong for the sake of her children but cannot hold back her tears. Mukesh's father, Shayam Sunder Singh, also blames the police and the administration for the incident.
The politics
The incident has also shaken the political landscape in Bihar and led to unease in the ruling alliance. The Bharatiya Janata Party has alleged that "jungle raj" has returned to Bihar.
Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad has "advised" the chief minister on how to control crime, something that Nitish Kumar's party members haven't taken kindly to. "I wish the chief minister would take all steps, including taking notorious criminals in jails on remand and replacing lax officers with proactive ones to break the criminal racket," he said. He also urged the chief minister to give the police a free hand in controlling crime effectively and asked the government to fix the responsibilities of police officials.
Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal (United) wasn't pleased with this and reacted sharply by saying that the chief minister needed no mentoring. According to top JD (U) sources, what riled the party the most was the fact that ally RJD added its voice to the chorus of "jungle raj returns". The party feels that Lalu Prasad's remarks on the law-and-order situation in the state were "unnecessary and irresponsible" and created bitterness among the allies.
However, RJD vice-president and former Union minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh countered that it was the chief minister's duty to maintain law and order and that Nitish Kumar must ensure this.
Before the leaders could douse the fire, a slugfest had already broken out. Reacting to Raghuvansh Prasad Singh's comments, JD(U) spokesperson Sanjay Singh said the senior RJD leader had lost his "mental balance". "[Raghuvansh Prasad Singh should] think before saying anything about Nitish ji. He is creating problems for the alliance," said Sanjay Singh.
Soon, two RJD ministers came to Singh's defence. Bihar Minister for Cooperative Department Alok Mehta and senior leader Mundrika Singh Yadav said that since the RJD was the biggest partner in the alliance, the RJD chief had every right to give "directives" to the government.
The BJP called Prasad the "super chief minister" - one who was calling the shots in the government. However, Prasad and Kumar maintained that there were no problems in the alliance. "If the party spokesmen do not understand the issue, they would do better to sleep in their respective homes. There is complete unity in the alliance," said Prasad.
Some in the JD(U), however, think that much of this has to with perception.
"Law and order is a matter of perception and Nitish Kumar seems to be slipping," says a JD(U) leader. "Many states considered better ruled than Bihar have a higher crime rate. There is no lack of intent on controlling crime, but the perception has changed since Nitish Kumar joined hands with Lalu Prasad. The upper caste and urban middle class were already against the ruling alliance in the state. This incident has provided the evidence this section needed to prove its point."
