This Raja still rules

Bundela incidentally is a distant relative of Jitendra Singh Bundela,the BJP MP from Khajuraho whom the party had preferred this time for a ticket in place of Singh. Hailing from Chhatarpur,Bundela stayed in a girls hostel in Bhopal but used to frequent Singhs house there.

Like her husband,Asha Rani too has blamed political rivals for his arrest. She said the allegation that one of Singhs sons had impregnated the victim was baseless. Bundela recently had an abortion in Indore.

After the BJP denied him a ticket in the Lok Sabha elections from Khajuraho,preferring Jitendra Singh Bundela instead,Singh hadnt hesitated to campaign for the Congress nominee. Incidentally,just months ago,his first wife Asha Rani had won the 2008 Assembly elections on a BJP ticket.

According to a senior BJP leader from Panna,Umesh Sharma,Singh threatened him and other party leaders to join in his revolt against the party nominee,and when they refused,threatened them with dire consequences.

A desperate Sharma complained to the Chief Minister and the Home Minister that the Bundelkhand administration was too weak to challenge Singh,a plea that came less than a week before the body of Vasundhara Bundela,a fashion designing student,was found.

It isnt Singhs first brush with the law,or with murder charges. In the early 1990s he had been arrested in connection with the murder of a relative of former Union home minister Buta Singh in Nainital. From behind bars,Singh fought his first election as an Independent,and won.

While he was in jail,his wives campaigned and succeeded in getting sympathy votes because they alleged he had been wrongly implicated, a senior politician recalls. On winning the election,he was let out on parole and took oath in style,riding an elephant to the Vidhan Sabha.

He was ultimately acquitted of the murder charge,one of the several allegations against him over the past two decades. He fought his next election on the Samajwadi Party ticket in 1998 and again won,though by a slender margin.

After spending some time in political wilderness,he came close to the BJP,which won power in Madhya Pradesh in 2003. His wife won the last election by a very narrow margin.

However,even out of power,there has been no shrinking of Singhs influence. Contracts for collection of tendu leaves in Kishangarh and Kesarwat are known to go to only him,as rivals level charges

of extortion,threats forcing people to vacate land and plots. None of the charges against him has ever been proved,though.

Singh has claimed that he wasnt in Bhopal when his grandnieces murder took place,and that he would take his life rather than live with a taint if the charges against him were proved.

While the police questioned him over five days on the case,he continued to drop names and resisted attempts at sustained interrogation. On one occasion,he made his interrogators wait saying he had to call on Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan. He did meet Chouhan but reportedly came back without much help.

The police say one of Singhs hired help,who doubles as a driver,allegedly killed Bundela,who had spent the night of December 10 at his house in Bhopals Kolar area. Bloodstains were found in the Bolero used by Singh.