Former Chief Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav maintains he and his family have kept their distance from his nephew Nagendra Rai — who is facing five cases of extortion and criminal intimidation — but the part-time Bhojpuri singer has continued to evade the law for the better part of 33 years. Nagendra Rai (54) was booked by Danapur (Patna) Police on March 13, for trying to extort Rs 3 crore from a Patna builder to allow him to construct a multi-storey business complex on a plot of land along Danapur-Khagaul. The 13-katha land, valued at over Rs 22 crore, is owned by one Subhash Rai, who got into an agreement with Patna builder Nitin Kumar to raise a building over it. Nagendra, who had allegedly tried to extort Subhash Rai once before in 2017, for which he was chargesheeted, is out on bail. Son of Lalu's elder brother Mahavir Rai, Rai settled in Patna years ago, after raising a house on a plot in Gola Road of Rupaspur in Danapur. He launched his part-time career as a Bhojpuri and Hindi singer some 25 years ago, and is known to have practised and performed with at least two senior IPS officers, both of whom also double up as singers. But, by the late 1990s, his name had started cropping up in connection with criminal incidents, with Rai accused of using his ties with Lalu to threaten and extort people, mainly contractors or land owners. Around this time, Lalu and his family began maintaining a distance from Rai, with him keeping out of the wedding functions of Lalu's daughters and sons. The last time someone from Lalu's family came face to face with Rai in public was in March 2021, when Deputy CM Tejashwi visited the Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (IGIMS) in Patna to pay his last respects to Rai's father Mahavir, who died after a prolonged illness. The first time the BJP, now the principal opposition in Bihar, attacked Lalu for "trying to shield" Rai was in 2003, after the then director of Buddha Institute of Dental Sciences, Raghvendra Narayan Rai, lodged a case at Shastri Nagar Police Station of Patna, alleging that over a dozen armed people led by Rai had barged into his house and threatened to kill him and his family. Rai faced another case of criminal intimidation in 2004, lodged by former Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) chairman Subhash Sharma. He faced tough police action for the first time in December 2005, after Nitish Kumar became the Bihar CM. He was arrested by the Patna Police in connection with a 2004 case, in which he allegedly opened fire and demanded money from a resident of Raja Bazar in Shastri Nagar of Patna. This was when N H Khan was Patna's senior superintendent of police (SSP). Later, Patna SSP Kundan Krishnan also went after Rai, who, however, kept dodging the police. In 2017, when N H Khan returned to Patna as the inspector general (IG) of police, he again ordered a crackdown on Rai. A senior Patna Police officer said: "Rai follows a standard modus operandi. He either creates land disputes or focuses on disputed plots of land in areas of his influence — mainly Danapur, Shastri Nagar and Gardanibagh — to extort money from land owners. He also forges documents to usurp land, as he had unsuccessfully tried to do in the case of Subhash Rai in 2017. One of his alleged conduits, Kedar Yadav, was killed in August 2017 in Danapur." In the latest case, Danapur assistant SP Abhinav Dhiman said, "FIRs have been lodged from both sides, and we're looking into the matter." But Rai is yet to be questioned.
