At the heart of an 8-year-old ‘missing person’ case, a familiar Madhya Pradesh BJP name

Rajput, a four-time MLA from Surkhi in Sagar district, was among the 22 Jyotiraditya Scindia loyalists who sided with the Congress leader during his rebellion against the Kamal Nath-led government in 2020. After the BJP formed the government, Rajput was made a Cabinet minister along with other Scindia loyalists.

He first became an MLA from Surkhi Assembly seat in 2003 and was re-elected in 2008 and 2018 as a Congress candidate. Under Nath, he served as the Revenue and Transport minister. After defecting to the BJP, he won the Surkhi seat again in a bypoll. He was then rewarded with the Food and Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs portfolio in the Shivraj Singh Chouhan-led BJP government. In the 2023 Assembly polls, Rajput retained his seat, defeating the Congress’s Neeraj Sharma by a slim margin of 2,178 votes.

In the “disappearance” case, Rajput faces allegations of encroaching upon the land of one Mansingh Patel, who alleged that Rajput illegally registered the land in his name using forged documents.

The OBC Mahasabha, the petitioners in the latest order, told the Supreme Court in March 2023 that Patel had filed a complaint under the Code of Criminal Procedure’s (CrPC) Section 145 – for a “procedure where a dispute concerning land or water is likely to cause breach of peace” – against Rajput, alleging that the minister may “harm him over the dispute”.

Soon after this complaint, he went missing. Patel’s son Sita Ram lodged a complaint in August 2016, claiming his father was abducted on account of the land dispute. He alleged that instead of an FIR, a missing person complaint was lodged on August 26, 2016.

The district police “enquired” into the complaint and recorded statements of Patel’s family members. The police then initiated a search for Patel in the surrounding areas and made enquiries with locals, as per police records. The police even went to Dhanbad and Jamtara in Jharkhand, but were unable to trace Patel. From September 2017 to September 2019, the police claimed to have visited various places to locate Patel.

In 2023, his son Sita Ram also filed a writ petition, claiming the police made no efforts to locate his father, in the Madhya Pradesh High Court. Later, he withdrew the plea. The OBC Mahasabha approached the court after Patel’s son withdrew his petition.

The case took a curious turn when Sita Ram alleged that he was pressured by ex-BJP leader Rajkumar Dhanaura and another villager, Vijay Malviya, to “falsely implicate” Rajput for a payment of Rs 1-2 crore.

The Supreme Court noted that Sita Ram, in his statement to the police, said that his father “goes on a pilgrimage, then he does not come back home for many days, however, he keeps coming home and going back”, contradicting his earlier allegations of abduction.

The apex court said it failed to understand that if the son’s statement was true, then why were the local police “not able to trace him and take a specific stand before (the court) that the very allegation mentioned in the missing person report is false”.

“There is not an iota of evidence to suggest that Mansingh Patel is alive or has been seen in recent years… Even the latest affidavit of the Superintendent of Police is conveniently silent,” the Court said.

Rajput has said in his defence that the Supreme Court had made no comments against him. “I welcome the decision to form the SIT and I want the truth to prevail,” he said.

The SC-ordered SIT is not the first time Rajput has faced controversy over a land dispute.

In 2022, the Congress alleged that a 50-acre parcel of land was “first purchased by Rajput’s in-laws on his behalf, and later gifted to him to escape stamp duty”, and that the “land use was changed from ‘wasteland’ to ‘farmland’” during the registration of the plot to “avoid paying land revenue”. Rajput denied the allegations, saying, “Donation of land happened from a close blood relation under the law. It is registered under the law, anyone can view it. So what is the problem if my in-laws have donated land to me?”

Rajput has also been accused of violating the Model Code of Conduct multiple times. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the Election Commission issued a notice to Rajput, then in the Congress, for allegedly using vulgar language against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Rajput is also facing two FIRs for alleged “disobedience to order duly promulgated by public servant”.