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Journalism of Courage
The cash-for-query allegations levied by BJP MP Nishikant Dubey against Trinamool Congress Mahua Moitra are playing out on X, with the two leaders hitting out at each other on the platform.
In a post Friday, Dubey made a reference to businessman Darshan Hiranandani’s claim that Moitra demanded favours in order to ask questions about billionaire Gautam Adani in Parliament.
He then seemed to compare Moira to JMM general secretary Pankaj Mishra, who was arrested in July 2022 for illegally operating stone-crushers.
Said Dubey, “There was a JMM general secretary Pankaj Mishra. He used to say daily via newspapers, tweets and social media that the CBI and ED are welcome. One day an agency indeed came and he has been in jail… The same kind of passion is now being seen in someone who procured LV and Gucci through extortion. Is another Pankaj ready?”
The ‘Santhal ka CM’
On June 22, 2020, Jharkhand-based businessman Sambhu Nandan Kumar filed a complaint against Mishra, a very close aide of Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren, accusing him of assault over the auction of a toll tax gate. Two years later, the Enforcement Directorate would begin an investigation against Mishra starting from this case, summoning Kumar as witness and impounding his phone as it contained recordings of the threat. Eventually, the ED arrested him in a money laundering case as part of alleged illegal mining.
Mishra was called ‘Santhal ka CM’ for being the most powerful man in the Santhal Parganas area, to which CM Soren belongs.
A native of Sakrogarh area of Sahibganj, with roots in Bihar, Mishra cut his teeth under the tutelage of Simon Marandi, one of the JMM’s founders whose politics revolved around Sahibganj and Pakur districts.
According to another insider, Mishra was the quintessential partyman, content being in the background, handling the “dirty work”, with no aspirations for electoral politics. “This was why Hemant trusted him completely, because of his lack of ambition. This is also how he remained close to both Shibu Soren and Hemant.”
That doesn’t mean proximity to power didn’t change him, say others, particularly after Soren became the CM in 2019 at the head of a JMM-Congress-RJD coalition government.
A source in the Chief Minister’s Office talked about a lasting image from the very first Cabinet meeting of the government. “Mishra walked behind CM Soren, his shirt collar up, two buttons open. Someone objected to this, and he became extremely angry.”
Over the past three years, Mishra is believed to have got close to many business owners in Sahibganj area, where stone chips are mined. Word on the street soon was that Mishra’s word counted on who could be in the business of stone and sand mining and its transportation to neighbouring states, and that rules could be “bent”.
As per sources, business owners in the field realised not to go against him in their own best interests.
On May 3 2021, a police officer in Sahibganj district, Rupa Tirkey, investigating a case against Mishra, died allegedly by suicide. Tirkey’s death is now being probed by the CBI, after the BJP took up the matter and her family approached the Jharkhand High Court.
