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Business News/ Opinion / Online-views/  The Bahubali behind bars
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The Bahubali behind bars

High on a cocktail of muscle power, money power and people power, Shahabuddin knows he has become indispensable in his region

A file photo of RJD leader Mohammed Shahabuddin. Photo: PTIPremium
A file photo of RJD leader Mohammed Shahabuddin. Photo: PTI

Sivan’s strongman Mohammad Shahabuddin is behind the bars again. The highest court in the country, after a long debate, decided on Friday to cancel the bail granted to him by the Patna high court with immediate effect.

The Supreme Court also ruled that the murder case against Shahabuddin be heard urgently. On the surface, it appears to be a victory for the Bihar government. But if one delves deeper, one realizes that in the light of numerous lapses during the hearing, the honourable judges were compelled to express their displeasure.

The state government also got another jolt on Friday. The Patna high court struck down the state government’s pet project of implementing a prohibition law in Bihar.

Coming back to Shahabuddin, does he care about going back to jail?

Perhaps not! When a journalist asked him his reaction to late journalist Rajdev Ranjan’s wife Asha Devi approaching the Supreme Court to get his bail cancelled, he responded: “I don’t care."

Why should he care? After all, the 49-year-old has already spent 11 years behind bars. Whether he is in prison or outside, it doesn’t appear to affect his notoriety or his political influence.

When Hindustan journalist Rajdev Ranjan was shot dead in public view on 13 May, Shahabuddin was again in prison. Ranjan’s wife kept saying she suspected Shahabuddin’s hand in her husband’s murder, but the police could not find the ‘evidence’. But they did arrest three suspects in the case. We have seen this before.

The case is now before the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). It has taken suspect Laddan Miyan on remand. Mohammad Kaif and Sonu Kumar Soni, two other suspects in the case, sought the protection of the court as soon as the CBI came into the picture. Before this, Kaif was seen in full public view during the procession organized to celebrate Shahabuddin’s release from jail. How was he roaming free despite police presence? The answer is obvious.

Shahabuddin has 45 cases registered against him. He has already been convicted in nine other cases. According to the law, he cannot contest elections, but he plays an important role in every election. That’s why Lalu Prasad made him a member of the Rashtriya Janata Dal working committee even as he was behind bars. Political posts are doled out only when it benefits a party.

Did you know that Shahabuddin is an MA in political science and even has a bona fide Ph.D degree from Muzaffarpur’s Dr Bhim Rao Ambedkar University? In the 1990s, if he wanted to, as a professor somewhere, ‘Doctor’ Shahabuddin could have been teaching the fundamentals of social contract theory as formulated by Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. This theory says that if in a particular period, anarchy reaches its peak, people become bloodthirsty. Exhausted by bloodshed, they come to a compromise under which they surrender all the rights of their lives to others, provided the others do the same.

This tenet of social contract theory challenged the sweeping powers bestowed on the king. Some scholars even credit this theory to the French Revolution of 1789.

Shahabuddin would have read this in political science textbooks, but he chose a path that ran contrary to this.

The first case against him was registered in 1986. Four years later, Shahabuddin won his first election from Sivan’s Ziradei assembly seat. Ziradei is the birthplace of our first president, Rajendra Prasad. He was re-elected from the constituency in 1995. The next year, Shahabuddin filed papers for Lok Sabha and won. During the same period, there was talk of him becoming the minister of state for home during the then Deve Gowda government. But it could not reach fruition in the face of heavy criticism.

He was elected to the Lok Sabha in 1999 and 2004. By now, the gentrified Shahabuddin had realized that getting a share in government is better than political patronage.

His opponents call him a synonym for terror, but his supporters call this perception nonsense and ask if that was the case, how do 55% of votes polled go in his favour?

Is this person, with his disdain for Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, inspired by Mario Puzo?

High on a cocktail of muscle power, money power and people power, this man knows that he has become indispensable in the region and that he cannot be overlooked.

That is why, on 10 September, right after his release from jail, he said that Nitish Kumar was the chief minister of circumstances. And that his leader was Lalu Prasad. On his own, Nitish Kumar cannot win 20 seats. Perhaps this statement proved to be costly for him.

Shahabuddin may or may not care if he is in prison or outside, but this is also true that youngsters in Bihar have to leave their homes since there are no opportunities for employment in the state. To get them jobs, one needs industry; but no industrialist wants to do business in Bihar. Why?

Sivan, where Shahabuddin was born and grew up, is around 90km from Champaran. Mahatma Gandhi launched his Satyagraha against British oppression of the country from here. If Gandhi was reborn, he might have been forced to initiate his second battle from here.

He would have had another reason for this. Bihar is full of people who are inflicting harm upon its land and its people. The land that made the world come face to face with democracy is living a distorted caricature of its history.

Shashi Shekhar is editor-in-chief, Hindustan.

His Twitter handle is @shekharkahin

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Published: 03 Oct 2016, 01:33 AM IST
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