Soren hides as cops come for him

Soren is wanted in a 29-year-old case in which he is accused of instigating the massacre of 11 persons as part of a campaign against non-tribals.

The police team led by Ranchi SP Niraj Sinha will have to notify the Lok Sabha Speaker, Somnath Chatterjee, about the arrest warrant before executing it.

Soren, meanwhile, is learnt to have submitted a leave application to Chatterjee’s office citing personal reasons for his inability to attend Parliament. He has asked his deputy in the Ministry to handle matters listed against his name.

When contacted, Chatterjee told The Indian Express that ‘‘no such letter (seeking leave) has reached me.’’ However, he said, ‘‘He (Soren) may have given the letter to my office after I left.’’

Jamtara sub-divisional judicial magistrate, A K Mishra, issued the arrest warrant against Soren and nine others on July 17, a day after Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil gave a clean chit to the Coal Minister saying that he was legally on bail.

While Patil was referring to a bail Soren had obtained way back in 1975 following the Chirrudih massacre, magistrate A K Mishra issued the fresh warrant because the JMM leader was among 10 of the 69 accused in the case who had never been committed to trial even though the chargesheet was filed way back in 1979.

This was actually the third time the court sought Soren’s arrest in the same case. The first time was in 1986 when the court found that Soren and nine others were absconding unlike the remaining accused who were being tried by a sessions judge.

The second time was in 2003 after the slow-moving trial was transferred to a fast track court of sessions judge U N Mishra. The magistrate of Jamtara again issued an arrest warrant against the 10 absconders, including Soren.

On September 9, 2003, Soren’s counsel, however, secured a reprieve for him by citing the bail he had obtained at the time of the filing of the chargesheet in 1979.

Subsequently, the magistrate found this year that he had been misled by Soren’s counsel who supressed the fact that the 1979 bail was cancelled in 1986 when the first arrest warrant was issued by the court.

It was when the media highlighted the issue this month and the BJP took it up in Parliament that Home Minister Patil claimed that Soren was out on bail.

The next day, magistrate Mishra issued the third warrant against Soren on the ground that his bail had been cancelled in 1986 and he had continued to abscond in the case.

In Lok Sabha today, BJP and Shiv Sena disrupted proceedings to press for Soren’s removal from the ministry. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad later told reporters that there was no question of the Government obliging them.

Soren’s JMM has six members in the Lok Sabha. At a time when the popularity graph of the ruling BJP in Jharkhand has hit rockbottom — the party won only one of the 14 Lok Sabha seats — the Congress desperately needs an alliance with the tribal party to wrest power in the state.

Azad said Soren was a victim of the Jharkhand BJP government’s ‘‘political vendetta.’’ Asked if Soren would be made to resign, Azad countered: ‘‘Why should he resign? If he is arrested, we will see. It’s a clear case of vendetta. How else can a case surface after 29 years?’’