PATNA: Notorious gangster Santosh Jha, who was serving a life term for the murder of two engineers and was facing trial in about 20 criminal cases, was shot dead on the premises of a lower court in Bihar’s Sitamarhi on Tuesday.
Just as Jha, who was lodged in Sitamarhi jail, walked into the premises of the chief judicial magistrate’s court in police custody, two unidentified assailants fired at him. With bullets hitting him on the head and chest, he lay there in a pool of blood and was rushed to a nearby hospital. He was declared brought dead.
Sitamarhi SP Vikas Burman said one court employee was injured in the firing and that a man believed to be one of the two assailants was arrested on the scene. The man is being questioned, he added.
Sources said Jha might have been eliminated at the behest of gangster Vikas Thakur of Motihari to avenge the murder of his father, Dilip Thakur, by Jha’s gang some five years ago.
Despite being lodged in jail since his arrest at Jharkhand’s Ramgarh on June 11, 2016, Jha had allegedly been running an extortion gang comprising about 40 criminals, said police sources. Jha, who was himself a sharpshooter, was convicted and sentenced to a life term in jail on March 8 last for the murder of two engineers at his behest in 2015.
The two engineers, Brajesh Kumar Singh and Mukesh Kumar Singh, who worked with a road construction company, were shot dead on December 26, 2015 with AK-47 rifles in Darbhanga for not forking out a levy of Rs 7 crore as demanded by Jha.
A resident of Sheohar district, Jha started his criminal life as a Maoist and later formed an outfit called People’s Liberation Army, known in Nepal as ‘Parshuram Sena’, which struck terror in companies engaged in the construction of roads and bridges in northern Bihar. Jha’s gang allegedly killed more than a dozen engineers and supervisors of these companies in the last one decade for not paying him levy.
Keen to join politics, Jha had told journalists in August 2016 that he was set to contest Bihar’s 2015 Assembly polls as a Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) with the help of the party’s Jamui MP Chirag Paswan but failed to do so at the last moment.
The premises of lower courts in Bihar have witnessed several firing incidents in recent years. A policeman was shot dead on the premises of a court in Vaishali district on April 3 last. An undertrial prisoner was shot dead on the premises of a lower court at Barh on September 8, 2017. Gangster Babloo Dubey was shot dead on the premises of a lower court in West Champaran in May 2017.
The Opposition RJD and Congress attacked Bihar’s NDA government over the decline in law and order situation and the security on court premises. Chief Minister Nitish Kumar ordered a review of the state’s law and order situation on September 4.