PATNA: The muscleman who was once the blue-eyed boy of JD(U) chief Nitish Kumar and RJD supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav is a forlorn man in Bihar politics. Once counted among Nitish’s “most favoured dons” and infamous for his proximity to Lalu, the 55-year-old don and MLA Ranvir Yadav was handed down his second life sentence on January 3. Forsaken by the top bosses of Bihar, his erstwhile proximity to them couldn’t save him from imprisonment.
Ranvir shot dead his 16-year-old cousin for pushing a goat off a terrace 29 years ago, for which he was awarded life imprisonment last week. Feared in central Bihar for 25 years, Ranvir has completed his first life term for the Lakshmipur-Taufir Diara massacre of 1985, in which 100 villagers were hacked to death and their bodies dumped in the Ganga; official data said nine were killed and 300 houses were torched.
Yadav’s trajectory in crime and politics is similar to the state’s don-turned-politicians Mohammad Shahabuddin, Pappu Yadav and Anant Singh. Ranvir wields hefty political influence in his home district of Khagaria. Many in Bihar recall how he protected Nitish from an agitating group of contractual teachers in Khagaria. He snatched a policeman’s automatic weapon and fired in the air to prevent them from attacking the CM. Nitish’s government, then a JD(U)-BJP alliance, suspended 11 policemen for negligence but took no action against Ranvir.
Both Nitish and Lalu have courted Ranvir, who became an MLA as an independent but later joined RJD. Ironically, it is the RJD and JD(U) alliance that made Ranvir a political pariah and led to his conviction and imprisonment.