| Published on 06-09-2007 In National | | Viewed 1615 times | | Shahabuddin: The epitome of criminal-politician Nexus |
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| Written by
N.R.Mohanty | 
The RJD MP Mohammed Shahabuddin was last week sentenced by a Sessions' court in Bihar to 10-year rigorous imprisonment for attacking the then Siwan SP in 1996. Given the number of criminal charges pending against him, it is reasonable to surmise that Shahabuddin may have to spend his whole lifetime in jail, unless, of course, the political circumstances undergoes a dramatic change.
Shahabuddin probably best symbolizes the much-derided nexus of politicization of crime and the criminalization of politics. He began his career as a criminal very early in his life, entered politics on his own steam, won the assembly election as an independent in 1990, when he was just 23, two years short of the statutory minimum age for becoming an MLA. The matter went to the court; by the time the court invalidated his election, he had almost completed the term.
By then, he had become so popular in his Ziradei constituency (Ziradei was the birthplace of India's first President Rajendra Prasad) that different political parties started wooing him. Laloo Prasad Yadav, who had a hugely successful term as chief minister from 1990 to 1995, had worked hard to cement the Muslim-Yadav (M-Y) alliance in Bihar. He desperately wanted Shahabuddin in his party fold to strengthen his political base. Shahabuddin was also eager to join hands with the Laloo regime as it allowed him to treat the entire district of Siwan (of which Ziradei was a part) as his fiefdom.
Thus the alliance was mutually beneficial. Shahabuddin contested the 1995 assembly election as an RJD candidate and, expectedly, won a landslide victory. When the Lok Sabha election came in 1996, Shahabuddin demanded and got the RJD ticket for Siwan seat and won handsomely.
He had by then become a political star. In the district of Siwan, the long hand of law never reached him. His writ was law. Top officials in the district (the district magistrate, the superintendent of police and even the judicial officials) had no other option but to do his bidding. Otherwise, they knew he would paralyse their functioning and if need arose, could hound them out. One young SP, S K Singhal, dared to take him on. But Shahabuddin retaliated with such ferocity that the police officer found himself helpless. The SP lodged an FIR against Shahabuddin and asked for reinforcements to challenge the well-armed gangster. But the state government carried out the fiat of Shahabuddin and issued marching orders to the SP.
The message was loud and clear. The state machinery was at his beck and call. Nobody dared touch him. It was not surprising that though several cases of murder, kidnapping and intimidation had been lodged against him, he was never arrested, let alone convicted. The prosecution never found sufficient evidence, witnesses never saw him committing any offence and the judges never found any basis to indict him.
The criminal-politician got a jolt for the first time when the CPI-ML (Liberation), the only party to pose any semblance of political fight against Shahabuddin, filed a petition before Justice D P Wadhwa, the then chief justice of Patna High Court, praying for the arrest of Shahabuddin, who was the prime accused in the murder of a CPI-ML leader, Chandrashekar. Justice Wadhwa was aghast at the police officers' contention that Shahabuddin, then a Member of Parliament, was absconding and he was beyond their reach! Justice Wadhwa warned the police officials that he would place them behind the bars if Shahabuddin was not presented before the appropriate court within 10 days. The order led to panic in the state machinery. They rushed to Laloo Yadav to broker a solution.
After a lot of deliberations and legal consultations, Laloo Yadav advised Shahabuddin to surrender himself before the court, instead of the police arresting him. Taking on a Chief Justice of the high court was not wise, he was told. That apart, there was a buzz in the legal circles that Justice Wadhwa was in the line to be elevated to the Supreme Court soon. Shahabuddin was told that it was only a matter of time; with Justice Wadhwa's elevation, there would be no problem in getting him released. Shahabuddin realized that the surrender before the court was the best possible course in the given circumstances; that way, he would tell the world that he had the highest respect for the judiciary.
The mammoth rally that he led spanned over a stretch of three kilometres before he surrendered in a local court. He possibly wanted to tell everyone concerned – politicians, bureaucrats and judicial officials – how popular he was and they would mess around with him only at their peril.
I had my first encounter with him while he was in the jail. I was covering the bye-election to the Ziradei constituency, which he had vacated after getting elected to the Lok Sabha. The RJD had fielded S S Yadav, a veteran of many a political battle, to represent a constituency, which was known as Shahabuddin's pocket borough. The opposition candidates had launched a campaign that Shahabuddin wanted a Muslim candidate whereas Laloo Yadav foisted a Yadav one; so the RJD would lose the seat without Shahabuddin's blessings.
I wanted to hear it from the horse's mouth. So I went to the Siwan jail to meet him. It was five in the afternoon. The jail superintendent met me outside the gate and told me that the MP was kept in solitary confinement after 3 pm and no one could meet him thereafter without the special permission of the district magistrate or district judge. I sought out both of them as I had to leave for Patna the next morning but both refused saying that they couldn't permit me to see him at that hour without the permission of the high court which had ordered his incarceration.
Frustrated, I went to see Mr. Yadav. He rubbished the opposition for desperately trying to mislead the people. "I am Shahabuddin's candidate, not Laloo Yadav's". Laloo Yadav wanted a Muslim candidate, but Shahabu (as Shahabuddin is fondly called by elders fawning over him) insisted on my candidature, he said.
As if to corroborate his point, he asked me to speak to Shahabuddin himself. He dialed a number and told the person on the other side, "A journalist from Patna says that you are not supporting me. Tell him the truth", and handed over the phone to me. The man I was talking to on phone told me exactly the same what Yadav had said.
But I was not sure if it was Shahabuddin (I had never spoken to him before and I was wondering how could he have a telephone in his cell as there was no mobile phone then). I asked if I could see him. His response was instant: "Why don't you come along now"? It was almost 9 PM and I rushed in disbelief.. Just as I reached the jail gate again, there were two persons waiting to escort me inside. A small door opened, and after a few steps, another door opened and I was ushered into a big room (later I came to know that it was jail superintendent's chamber). I found Shahabuddin sitting in a revolving chair and more than 100 people squatting on the floor. Apparently, they were discussing the nitty-gritty of the elections!
Shahabuddin warmly received me and directed me to the other vacant chair. He repeated what he had told me earlier about Yadav's candidature. He expressed his innocence, how he has been dedicatedly working for the welfare of the constituents; how his political rivals were jealous of him and trying to implicate him in false cases; how he had great faith in the judiciary and that he would come out clean eventually. Throughout the conversation that lasted for over an hour, he was at his civil best and he said everything politically correct.
When I asked him the conditions in jail and he started responding, someone stood up from among the crowd with folded hands and told him in colloquial Hindi, which translated in English meant; "It is my prayer to the Lord not to discuss the condition of the jail". To my utter dismay, I found it was none other than the jail superintendent himself who had fobbed me off in the afternoon. Shahabuddin conceded his plea and requested me to strike off his comments on jail conditions.
When the time came to bid goodbye, to my surprise, Shahabuddin came out of the jail gate, up to my car and shook hands: "I am meeting you for the first time. If I were not in the jail, I would have welcomed you with a dawat (grand feast). That is due for your next visit", was his parting shot.
The chain of events overwhelmed me: how the rich and powerful cock a snook at the law and be nonchalant about it, that too in front of a journalist. A prime accused in a murder case invites me to give an interview in the jail at 9 pm; he is perched on the superintendent's chair, while a hundred people including the superintendent seated on the floor. Did he expect me to write only what he spoke, and not what I saw? In Patna, some of my colleagues advised me to opt for the safe course. But I felt I would be failing in my journalistic duty if I remained silent about the shenanigans that I was witness to in the jail.
The next morning when the story appeared in the front page of the Times of India, Patna, a chill went down the spine of all concerned. Justice Wadhwa took suo motu cognizance of the report and served notices to every big gun in the administration – from the chief secretary down to the jail superintendent and Shahabuddin himself. Two RJD MPs, supposed to be close friends of Siwan strongman, met me saying that they had come as my well-wishers and tried to persuade me to change my stance – to issue a clarification to the effect that the interview took place in the visiting hours and in the designated place. Clearly, they wanted the interview to stand (as the message was conciliatory) but not the circumstances of the interview (which would show the flagrant violation of rules).
I stood my ground and said that it would be journalistic hara-kiri if I went by their advice. They subtly told me that life was more important than these small adventures and left me to my fate.
A week later, after intense legal confabulations, all those who had been served notices – the chief secretary, home secretary, the DGP the DM, the SP, Jail Superintendent and Shahabuddin—gave an identical one-sentence explanation that the interview never took place and the journalist had indulged in yellow journalism to blackmail the imprisoned leader at the behest of the vested interests.
The chief justice then summoned me to the court. I gave the court my entire itinerary and other circumstantial evidence and asked it to judge for itself if a journalist, that too from outside the state, could afford to blackmail a leader like Shahabuddin with whom even the chief minister of the state is scared to meddle. Justice Wadhwa grilled the government counsel about the kind of vested interest that I represented and the kind of blackmail I could resort to. Having found no satisfactory answer, he issued contempt notices against all of them for making a false submission under oath.
There was a pall of gloom in the state administration. It was an extraordinary situation when the entire top brass of the administration faced the real possibility of imprisonment. While they were dreading the spectre that would unfold, there came good news for them: Justice Wadhwa's elevation to the Supreme Court. Justice Wadhwa had anticipated it; he was ready to leave and by evening he was gone. He joined the Supreme Court the next day.
With his exit, the contempt notice went to the backburner. Shahabuddin was out of the jail in a few days time. Everyone forgot about the cases against him, till the RJD remained in power in the state.
Now that the JD (U)-BJP combine is in power, and the special court is doing a day-to-day hearing in the Siwan jail premises that Shahabuddin is being made accountable to the law. For all you know, if the RJD bounces back to power, Shahabuddin will walk free again. |
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