DAWN IN the countryside is lovely, but not always in Bihar. And if it is a Siwan village, it is really terrible. The daybreak of December 25 in Gambhirpur village of Nautan Block of this district was as usual. Villagers in ones or twos, a few with their cattle, wandering to and fro in the misty winter morning to perform their daily chores were now visible. Suddenly, a peasant found the back right leg of his ox caught by soil. So it was dug and the ox was rescued. But in the process villagers discovered a peculiar concrete-cement structure buried there. It was a 2x1 feet rectangular structure with two small yellow wire-pieces emanating from its two sides. Even the sickness of a pet is news in the village. So for Gambhirpur the excavation of this small concrete-cement structure fast became news and soon the matter was reported to their newly elected, highly popular Mukhia, Com. Naimuddin Ansari, resident of the neighbouring village Narayanpur. In the meanwhile some RJD supporters spread the rumour that the excavated structure is a landmine, the villagers of this locality never happened to see any. Most puzzling were the two electric wires, and none including Com. Ansari could decipher the use of these pieces. So, Com. Ansari, as he was the representative of the people, informed the matter to the local police station. The DSP visited the spot and asked the Mukhia to take the responsibility of the excavated structure. He turned down his proposal down and asked him to take responsibility of the excavated structure himself in the capacity of an investigating official. At last the officer in-charge did the same and the object was carried to the police station. It seemed the matter ended here, however, villagers were eager to know what the object found in the village ditch actually was.
But the villagers were not destined to know the reality. The district administration and the police were in no mood to reveal the truth that the object was knowingly planted by the supporters of Shahabuddin, the don of the district, notorious for killings and the longest list of crimes in the district, for his links with some international mafia dons, and who virtually rules over the district, as the entire lot of the district administration and the police acts on his instructions. He and his close cohort, the Deputy Superintendent of Police Nirmal Kumar Azad, conspired and raided the house of Com. Naimuddin Ansari and arrested him and 5 others in the dead night of December 27th, two days after the object was found without caring to discover what it really was. Naimuddin and others were arrested in the night with a large contingent of armed police, so that villagers could not resist them. However, within 15 minutes peasants began to gather and by 3 a.m. 500 villagers surrounded the police station and demanded unconditional release of all the arrested villagers including the Mukhia. Three of the arrested villagers were soon released, but Comrades Ansari, Rameshwar Chaudhury, a common villager supporting the cause of CPI(ML) and Ishwar Chaudhary, a man hailing from a distant village of Mirganj who happened to be in the village on that fateful day to visit his in-laws, were kept in the custody. But the mass unrest could not be quenched. The D.S.P. soon left the police station and returned only at 10 a.m. and lathicharged the masses, now above a thousand. Villagers retaliated with stone pelting. At last the SDPO appeared on the scene and requested the CPI(ML) leaders ex-MLA of Darauli Com. Amarnath Yadav and Satyadeo Ram, the MLA of Mairawa, present there to pacify the masses and the intervention of the latter averted a yet another brutal massacre by the police.
Street-corner meetings were organised on December 28 to protest the police highhandedness and the mass meeting scheduled to protest police oppression in the area was converted into a protest meeting against this nefarious police act and the matter was raised in another pre-organised mass meeting at Raghunathpur. On December 30 Mairwa, Darauli and Guthni blocks of the district observed bandh in protest, with a number of torch-light processions, mass meetings and burning of effigies of the police DySP at two places with participation of over tens of thousands of people. However, the S.P. was adamant, and on January 8 he lied that the said object was detonated and the noise was heard up to a distance of 3 KM, though the town-people did not attest to having heard any such explosion or noise. Remarkably, the same story of the so-called Gambhirpur landmine was being propagated by the S.P. even before the drama of its explosion was enacted.
The three prisoners were soon sent to the jail and handed over to Rustam, Mantu and Munna (nephew of Shahabuddin), the lieutenants of Sahabuddin now in the jail facing the trial of the daylight murder of Com. Chandra Shekhar and Shyam Narayan Yadav. Siwan jail too is under the evil influence of Shahabuddin with jail officials turning themselves into his henchmen. Two wards are specially packed with Shahabuddin’s men, where they torture their opponents, who happen to land up in this jail. According to the findings of a high-powered CPI(ML) investigation team led by Com. Satyadeo Ram which talked to the villagers and other related people, Rustam and Munna tortured the three prisoners and broke the arm of Comrade Ansari and the elbow of Comrade Rameshwar Choudhury. Com. Naimuddin was severally beaten and has fractures in hand, leg and shoulders. Vyas Ram and several other prisoners had also met the same fate here in the past. Rustam handed over Com. Naimuddin a piece of paper and compelled him to read it aloud and it was taped. That the police is acting in connivance with Shahabuddin is revealed by the fact that the S.P. unsuccessfully tried to compel Com. Naimuddin to sign on exactly the same statement in the police station.
It is believed in the political circles of the district that the episode of the Gambhirpur landmine is cooked up by the S.P. on the instructions of the local RJD M.P. Shahabuddin with two objectives. The ruling elite of the district led by Shahabuddin is puzzled at the meteoric rise of the CPI(ML) in the district as the main opponent during last few years. In the last elections the Party polled over two and a half lakh votes against him. He at first tried to push the Party back by killing its cadres. Even its office secretary Com. Keshav Baitha was kidnapped and terrorised in presence of the then S.D.O. resulting in closing down the district office of the Party for a few months. However, the Party and its cadres could not be cowed down. Rather, during the Pratappur incident, when police rebelled against their officials and raided the house and village of Shahabuddin, the CPI(ML) initiatives compelled him to adopt a defensive posture, though all other political parties made an about turn and jumped to his side in the name of luring him to march to the anti-Laloo camp. Now Shahabuddin has adopted the tactics of eliminating the entire district Party leadership, either by killing them wherever they are found or getting them imprisoned on fabricated charges and making them handicapped through inhuman torture by Rustam and others. In connivance with the S.P., on the one hand, to make murder of Com. Amarnath Yadav and Satyadeo Ram easy, the strength of the police bodyguards of the latter has been reduced (in place of half a dozen of bodyguards only two) and on the other, all the known district leaders of CPI(ML) have been implicated in the Gambhirpur landmine case. Secondly, the CBI court is now hearing the evidences against Shahabuddin regarding his involvement in Chandrashekhar murder case. Com. Satyadeo Ram is a prime eyewitness and his evidence is sure to go against Shahabuddin. So Shahabuddin is not ready to allow Com. Satyadeo appear and place his statement before the CBI court. In the past, Shahabuddin has adopted this tactics several times i.e. has terrorised and threatened witnesses to silence them or to change their statement before the court in several other cases.
However, CPI(ML) is ready to resort to all political and legal means to resist the demon called Shahabuddin and to prevent him from regaining offensive once again and we hope the district will see the gradual downfall of this satan in the coming years as contradictions among even RJD ranks – thanks to his criminal ways of handling all affairs and harassing and annoying everyone – are getting sharper day by day, while masses have decided to intensify their struggle against him. A huge mass rally has been organised on 22 January with the slogan “Make Siwan district crime free, suspend the SP and Jail Superintendent of Siwan, fight for development of Siwan”.
– Ashok Kumar