Volume 4, No. 3, March 2003

— Nirmal

‘Three criminals killed in police encounter’ — screamed the news paper headlines on the 28th of December, 2002. According to this story, a dozen armed miscreants visited the locality on two wheelers and entered the Sammelan market in Ashiana Nagar in Patna around 4.30 PM. They looted Rs. 40,000 in cash besides coupons and sim cards worth Rs.10,000 from the Gautam STD booth. Seeing the cops, the criminals, while fleeing, fired several rounds. The cops returned the fire in which three miscreants were killed on the spot and the police recovered two vehicles and a few weapons. The police claimed the deceased were notorious criminals and were wanted in connection with several cases of loot and dacoity in the area.

The people of Bihar thought this to be another case of dacoity and a shoot out between the police and the criminals, not an uncommon sight in Patna. The dy. S.P., who visited the spot later tried to pressurize the SHO to include his name as the officer who led the encounter so that he could later win some award. The SHO withstood the pressure as he wanted to take the whole credit for the ‘bravery’.

The truth, however, turned out to be something different. As soon as the news of the death of the three youth, just past their teens, reached their parents they were aghast. The three youth had no criminal antecedents. Vikas was a student of Electronics Honours at AN college, Patna. Prashant (20) was selected for the diving course in the Indian Navy and had just returned to Patna from Delhi to get a police verification certificate. The third youth, Himanshu (21), had to join a government department on compassionate grounds.

The three youth were murdered in cold blood in a most barbaric act. It was over a trifle that the SHO of Shastri Nagar PS chose to end the lives of the three budding youth. The three youth had an altercation with a telephone booth owner over a wrong billing. The booth owner happened to have some ‘connection’ in the police. After the altercation there was a fight between both the sides and the three youth were thrashed black and blue. Meanwhile the police arrived on the scene and egged on the people to beat them further branding them dacoits. When the three were gasping for death, the people were chased away and the police pumped three bullets into the temples of the youth.

There was widespread public reaction in the locality as soon as the news reached them. Friends and relatives of the youth and the agitated residents of the locality blocked traffic and demanded action against the culprit police. By the next day, as the ghastliness of the murder began to sink into the minds of the public, the rage further increased. Seeing this public outrage the opposition parties got into the business. They gave a Patna bandh call on 31st December. To protest this barbaric killing by the police the CPI (ML) (Peoples War) also supported this bandh. There was a spontaneous outburst of people on the streets of Patna. Thousands of people fought pitched battles with the police enforcing the bandh. They pelted stones at the police and burnt many police vehicles. The administration vehicles also bore the brunt of the public anger. Thus the Patna bandh was a resounding success.

Earlier in the week there was another ghastly cold-blooded murder which was again tried to be passed off as another encounter. This incident occurred in Begusarai district in north Bihar. The dy.S.P. gunned down three youth including an advocate in Majhauli. Even the SP and the district magistrate wrote a report indicting the dy.S.P. and recommended punishment. But the de-facto chief minister of Bihar, Laloo Yadav, rejected the recommendations of the SP and the DM and sought a fresh report by the DIG and deputy commissioner of Munger. He tried to shield the dy.S.P. saying that the dy.S.P. was innocent and had been implicated because he belonged to a backward caste. Laloo took the backward caste issue to the most perverted limits.

People were seething with anger over these blatant killings. All the parties except the ruling RJD and the Congress called for a Bihar bandh on 3rd December, which was also a resounding success. Unlike many bandhs that the parliamentary parties enforce, this one evoked spontaneous response. Thousands of people marched through the streets of Patna observing the bandh. They again battled with the police. Ofcourse, to encash this public anger, the parliamentary parties, especially the BJP and the Samata vultures, descended to trade on the dead bodies. They thought these killings to be a god-sent opportunity to strike at Laloo, which they have been miserably failing at. They indulged in vandalism during the bandh. They egged on the youth and students who had come out in large numbers to protest the killings, to turn this movement into another JP movement of the 70s. Let’s see what are the prospects for such a movement. Before that, more on such ‘encounters’.

The Ashiana Nagar incident is not just an act of a high-handed police official but the result of the extension of the policy of the government to give a free hand to the police to kill ‘extremists’ and others whom the establishment finds inconvenient.

The ruling parties are all shedding crocodile tears over the dead bodies of the three youth killed in a fake encounter. But this is not the first time that the police have killed people in fake encounters. A few months back Surendra Gareri, Magadh zonal committee secretary of the Mazdoor Kisan Sangrami Parishad was killed in cold blood by the Masaurhi police after capturing him while campaigning for a mass programme. After a few days another youth was killed in the same area after being brutally tortured by the Masaurhi DSP. No ruling class party protested this. The CPI(ML) (Liberation) chose to remain silent. After all, these were the activists of a revolutionary movement and branded as ‘extremists’ and ‘anarchists’. It was quite natural to eliminate them. What is there to protest about? Even the media who are going agog about this latest ‘encounter’ and are recollecting other incidents of fake encounters are conveniently ignoring the cases of ‘extremists’. When once the rule of law is given a go-bye and the police are given a free hand, then it is natural for them to eliminate any one found inconvenient to them. It could be some criminals who may have gone out of control, or who may have to be just eliminated in order to show, for public consumption, that something is being done to control crimes - which are increasingly the result of a strong nexus between politicians, criminals and the police, especially in Bihar.

In any case, owing to the public outburst the Laloo-Rabri government announced a CBI enquiry and pushed the ball into the court of the central government. It also filed a case against the police officer who killed the youth and arrested him. But so far it did not file a case against the DSP who tried to cover up the case and even tried to pose himself as the one leading the operation. In the Majhali encounter case also the DSP was not arrested nor suspended from duty till the time of writing this report.

It is a right observation by many in the media that the spontaneous outburst of the people against the fake encounter is the result of the pent up rage for long, owing to the lack of development, criminalisation and the all round crisis under the Laloo-Rabri Raj. The Bihar economy is in shambles. More than a few dozen employees of various government departments and corporations have committed suicides or have died of hunger as they are not getting their salaries for months together. The same is the condition of thousands of teachers and lecturers. There are no employment opportunities for the youth and the students. Moreover, the education system is under a severe crisis with rarely an academic session being completed in time. Nevertheless, there are regular increase in fees. Thousands of students of the Tilka Manjhi university and of Magadh and Mithila universities agitated militantly last year over all these issues. Most of rural Bihar is centuries behind the 21st century in its economy, polity and society. People live under perpetual darkness with no power, no proper roads, no schools, no teachers, no hospitals etc. etc. Rural Bihar is also a witness to regular massacres of the downtrodden and the dalits by the Ranbir Sena and quite a few dozen criminal gangs patronized and nursed by many ministers, MLAs and MPs.

All this, while the politicians, bureaucrats and criminals are amassing crores of rupees. Bihar is also notorious for corruption led from the front by the scamster Laloo and his criminal ministers and MLAs. Thousands of crores of rupees are gobbled up by them in the name of various schemes and contracts.

When such an all-round crisis is pervading society, only a flash is necessary to trigger a spontaneous outburst. In that sense it is true that the situation is similar and rather graver to that of the 1970s. People do want a change. They do want a ‘total revolution’. But this total revolution is not the one promised by JP in 1974. In 1974, the students who were agitating for their demands were fired upon by the police, killing many. This incident outraged them and there was a spontaneous outburst of the student movement. As the people at large were also seeking ‘change’, the student movement showed them the way and the movement soon assumed a mass character. Though all the ruling class parties, except the Congress, were trying to steer the movement that erupted against the Congress rule to suit their interests, the students who had come under one banner repulsed any such attempt by the parliamentary parties. They virtually dragged away the politicians who tried to come to the dais. Such was their contempt towards the parliamentary parties. This anger could not of course be developed into higher revolutionary consciousness as the Naxalbari movement had faced a set back by that time. At that juncture JP entered the scene and could assume the leadership of the movement as he had a cleaner image and had not been thoroughly exposed, though he was also one of them, albeit a bit different. His image of a person not tempted by state power helped him in assuming leadership of the movement. During the post-emergency elections, JP cobbled together the Janata party and promised the people a change, asking them to give ‘one chance’ to prove his point. Well, the people indeed overwhelmingly give him and his Janata Party a chance and saw what he and his disciples had in store for them. It is his disciples - the scamster Laloo, the turncoat George Fernadez, the communalist Susheel Kumar Modi, the so called dalit and backward champions Nitish Kumar, Ram Vilas Paswan, and Sharad Yadav etc., who can conveniently rub shoulders with the fascist BJP for a few crumbs of power, who are ruling Bihar and ruining the lives of the people of Bihar. The people have seen enough of what they can do to the people if given ‘a chance’. The people are not ready to be deceived once again however doggedly the opposition parties may try to turn the present movement into the movement of 70s. They are disgusted with all the parliamentary parties. They have seen through all the power seekers. Hence there is no chance whatsoever for a movement of the ‘total revolution’ of the JP type.

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