THE OLD WOMAN AND THE DON

 

 

For those who don’t know him, the bare facts. Mohammed Shahabuddin is a Lok Sabha member from Bihar who is generally seen as the local Robin Hood, and who is a confidant of Railway Minister Lalu Prasad since the time Lalu was Chief Minister. Sahabu bhaiyya, as he is called, stands accused in 34 cases ranging from murder, kidnapping and nexus with foreign spying agencies to violations of the Arms Act. On 2 March, he was sentenced to two years imprisonment for the violent attack on the Siwan (Bihar) CPI(ML) office years ago. It is the first verdict against Shahabuddin and it rests on the testimony of Kausalya Devi, mother of former JNU Students Union CPI(ML) president Chandrasekhar. Chandrasekhar was shot dead on 31 March 1997, allegedly by Shahabuddin’s men (the case is on). The incident is since remembered every year.

In the ‘Republic of Bihar’, competitive criminalisation has ensured that things move at snails pace, if at all. So, the sentence is already being criticised as ‘soft’. But, it is important. It opens questions on Shahabuddin’s indispensability to Lalu and it is possible that the sentence might set in motion similar verdicts in the other cases. One reason why Shahabuddin was perceived as infallible was his ‘able handling’ of the crisis faced by Lalu when Nitish Kumar first became Chief Minister. Shahabuddin worked on the MLAs and made sure that the Nitish government fell within a few days.

The law might have tightened its grip around Shahabuddin but his control over the crime world remains. Also, the irony is that his ‘honourable brothers’ in the ‘profession’ elsewhere in Bihar could still hold sway under official patronage. The advantage gained by this sentence must not be lost. The faster the other cases are dealt with, the stronger will be the message that no one is above the law. This is of critical importance to Bihar, and the rest of India.