With a local court in Siwan rejecting the anticipatory bail plea moved by RJD MP Mohammad Shahabuddin in connection with a kidnapping case, the Rabri Devi government in Bihar continues to be in a bind over how to handle the situation arising from the surprise decision of the state police to issue arrest warrants against the controversial MP.
Although sources close to RJD president Laloo Prasad Yadav deny having anything to do with the Bihar police’s move to arrest Shahabuddin — who has emerged as a “Robin Hood” figure and commands considerable clout among the Muslim community — it is believed that by holding out the threat of arrest to the MP, the ruling party was only trying to rein in the Siwan MP who “had grown too big for his boots.”
However, with the judiciary now taking over, it appears matters have slipped out of the RJD’s control, making the possibility of Mr Shahabuddin’s arrest in the criminal cases against him a real one. This was confirmed by the state police’s intensified efforts to nab Shahabuddin, proclaimed as an absconder by the court, in the wake of rejection of his anticipatory bail plea today.
The STF of Bihar police, whose 100-odd personnel have been camping in Siwan for the past one week, plan to conduct more raids in search of the elusive MP.
Already, the Bihar DGP has sought the reopening of trial in nine of the 14 cases in which Shahabuddin has been acquitted “because prosecution witnesses did not appear in court to depose against him or turned hostile”. He has also written to the state government seeking a CBI probe into the MP’s alleged links with inter-state criminal gangs as well as into the disproportionate assets and property acquired by him.
The crime dossier on the RJD MP from Siwan, made available to the Union home ministry by the intelligence agencies, details his involvement in arms trafficking, murder, political killings, extortion and kidnapping. This apart, it confirms Shahabuddin’s direct link with the ISI through known agents like former Nepalese MP Dilshad Beg and ex-minister of Nepal Salim Mian Ansari.
He is said to have forged links
with the D Company as well as mafia dons from Bihar, West Bengal, Kolkata
and UP. Not only is the RJD MP believed to have supplied arms to notorious
criminal Bhupinder Tyagi alias Avdesh Tyagi, but also bought arms, allegedly
procured from J&K, from inter-state criminal Sunil Pandey for use in
his criminal activities.