M A I N   N E W S

Maoists gun down 16 in Bihar
Sanjay Singh
Tribune News Service

Patna, October 2
An armed squad of Maoist guerrillas reportedly raided Amausi Bahiyar village in Khagaria district of the state yesterday night and gunned down 16 persons, including five minors, allegedly with the intension of grabbing their land.

According to eyewitnesses, the marauders selectively chose their targets, dragged them out of their makeshift home, tied their hands and feet and pumped bullets into their bodies from a very close range. All victims belonged to backward castes. Fourteen of them were Kurmis, castemen of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, while two were Kushwahas, considered to be diehard supporters of the ruling JD(U).

It is after a gap of around 10 years that the state has witnessed any carnage of this magnitude. Chief Minister Nitish Kumar was shocked over the massacre as he had been claiming all this while that no carnages or caste riots had taken place in the state during four years of his tenure.

The Chief Minister sent his Deputy Sushil Kumar Modi, Revenue Minister Narendra Narayan Yadav and Director-General of Police Anand Shankar by a state chopper to the spot (around 220 km away from the state capital) to take stock of the situation. Agitated villagers raised slogans against the state government and heckled the Deputy CM in presence of the police chief. Demanding the Chief Minister’s presence on the spot, they also misbehaved with Agriculture Minister Renu Kumari and Khagaria MLA Poonam Devi, who had gone to the spot to sympathise with them.

On his return from the spot, the DGP said the police had launched a combing operation in the adjoining areas to nab the assailants. Around 10 persons, including the alleged mastermind of the incident OP Mahto, had been taken into custody so far.

The Chief Minister has announced a compensation of Rs 1.5 lakh to the next of kin of all those killed in the incident. While Rs 1 lakh would be given from the state coffer, Rs 50,000 would come from the Chief Minister’s relief fund.

Preliminary police investigations revealed that the reason behind these killings was a dispute over cultivation rights over 150 acres of land in the village.

RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav said it was a case of Naxal violence and it would be wrong to view it as an incident of caste war. The party has sent a delegation to the spot to ascertain the cause behind it, Lalu said.

LJP chief Ram Vilas Paswan went to the spot along with his younger brother and local MLA. He demanded a compensation of Rs 10 lakh each to the families of victims and government job to one of the dependents from each of the family.

Naxal ‘threat’ to Nitish Kumar

While the police was organising raids to arrest the Naxals who allegedly gunned down 16 persons in a village in the state, an SMS threat to Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar by a Naxal outfit through mediapersons created jitters in the state police headquarters. Around five to six reporters associated with both print and electronic media received an SMS today claiming that there was a threat to the life of the Chief Minister. The sender of the message had named himself “Dablu”. The message was in chaste Hindi and it read: “ Lal Salam! Aapke CM sahib ki jaan khatre mein hai, agar bachana chahte ho to hamare do neta, Raviji aur Birendraji, ko chhod do”, Dablu - 9308670993.