Politics over a dead voter

However,Shail Devi isnt concerned with any of it the politics behind the case,the newly beaming Lalu or the defensive Nitish. What the 68-year-old mother knows is that 18 years after her son was shot dead,she is no closer to getting justice. She sits in her mud brick house,amid her meagre possessions and her three sons and their families,and wonders why. Shail cant even bear looking at the Ganga that flows in her backyard. It was on the banks of this river,at the village middle school polling booth,that Sitaram Singh was killed. The 22-year-old had got married just six months earlier.

Shail remembers that Sitaram was very excited that day,November 16,1991,as it was the first time he was going to cast vote. A bypoll was being held for the Barh parliamentary seat. Dhibad is dominated by upper caste Bhumihars,otherwise traditional Congress voters,but around that time,V P Singh-led Janata Dal had started making inroads cutting across caste lines.

He was in the queue at the polling booth when the incident happened. I only know that there was firing and my son was killed. It is up to the police and court to tell me who did this, she says. 

Sitarams brother Radheshyam Singh,a small farmer,who had also gone to vote,was a witness to the incident. A rumour had been spread by someone that villagers were voting only for Congress candidate Siddhewar Prasad. At 2.30 pm,five JD leaders,including candidate Nitish Kumar (this was before the JD splintered into various factions),came to the booth, he said.

Heated arguments between Congress and JD workers followed,resulting in firing,remembers Radheshyam,who himself narrowly escaped a bullet. He ran away,then stopped on hearing screams of his younger brother Sitaram. By the time he rushed back,his brother was lying in a pool of blood. Radheshyam,who says he cant say for sure who opened fire,claims the JD leaders left the site threatening villagers. Nitish would go on to win the seat comprehensively,defeating Prasad. 

Now after 18 years of a meandering legal process,with the case haunting them at regular intervals,Sitarams family wants the case to be over once and for all. We do not want any political party to get mileage out of the case. Let the court settle it, Radheshyam says,adding he did not begrudge Nitish,but wanted speedy justice in his brothers case.

But that Radheshyam isnt likely to get. While the original FIR named Nitish apart from JD leaders Dularchand Yadav,Dilip Singh,Yogendra Yadav and Baudhu Yadav for the firing that killed Sitaram,the final police chargesheet submitted in Barh civil court in January 1993 dropped names of Nitish and Dularchand,saying there was not enough evidence against them.

For more than five years,there was no progress in the case. By the time Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate (ACJM) court,Barh,took cognisance of it in August 2008,accused Dilip Singh (former RJD minister and elder brother of Mokama JD-U MLA Anant Singh) and Baudhu Yadav had died. The only remaining accused,Yogendra Yadav,moved the Patna High Court in April 2009 and got a stay on the proceedings of the case pending before the Barh court.

Last month,Ashok Singh,already a case witness,filed a complaint in the ACJM,Barh court, challenging the dropping of Nitish and Dularchands names from the chargesheet. Interestingly,Radheshyam says it was solely the decision of his cousin Ashok Singh to file a complaint over the dropping of Nitishs name. Ashok Singhs brother says he might be under pressure. He has not come to the village for days, he says.

On September 2,2009,the ACJM,Barh,issued summons for Nitish and Dularchand to appear before it. Since then,both Nitish and Dularchand have got a stay from the high court.

That politics is involved in the case getting a new life is evident. While silent on why his partys government had not pressed for a speedy trial in the case,Lalu has asked for Nitishs resignation on moral ground. Lok Janshakti Party chief Ram Vilas Paswan has said that having got his two ministers to resign promptly for involvement in cases,Nitish should step down after the Barh court summons.

While the CM himself is quiet,Advocate General P K Sahi has questioned the legality and validity of the summons after the high court had stayed proceedings following Yogendras petition. JD(U) state president Rajiv Ranjan alias Lallan Singh has called it a big political conspiracy to destabilise the Nitish government. What has provided the CM ammunition to blow holes into the Opposition case is the fact that a witness in the case who had gone missing was recovered from the residence of former Congress MP Arun Kumar. The latter faces charges of kidnapping the witness. Bihar Congress chief Anil Kumar Sharma says Arun Kumar is being unnecessarily dragged into the matter.