Express News Service
PATNA: A 70-year-old man was hacked to death and one of his kin was left badly injured late on Thursday night in Bihar’s Darbhanga district by a group of men for allegedly naming a site after Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Local BJP workers staged a protest in the northern town and blocked a road on Friday claiming that the deceased, Ram Chandra Yadav, was a local BJP leader and demanding the arrest of the assailants. Several BJP leaders later sought to depict the incident as one perpetrated by the Opposition RJD supporters after the party’s victories in the bypoll.
Ram Chandra Yadav had erected a signboard saying “Narendra Modi Chowk” on a piece of disputed land at Babu Bhadwa village under Sadar police station area some two years ago. According to Kamal Yadav, who was injured in the attack, some 50 men came on motorbikes holding sticks and sharp weapons and demanded that the name of the place be changed immediately.
“They asked us to change the name of the site to Lalu Chwok instead of Modi Chowk. They hurled abuses and started assaulting us mercilessly,” Kamal told journalists.
DSP Dilnawaz Ahmed said police reached the spot soon after receiving an alert about the incident and arrested three people in the night itself.
“The attackers included several men from the minority community. They objected to the place being named after PM Narendra Modi and started attacking. These men should be arrested soon,” said Hari Sahni, president of Darbhanga district unit of BJP.
A preliminary probe by police, however, pointed to an old dispute over the piece of land behind the attack. One of Ram Chandra Sahni’s five sons was killed three years ago during violence over ownership of this plot of land, said police officials. The deceased was not a leader of BJP, they added.
“The incident seems to have nothing to do with the naming of the place, which is not even a square. Nobody from any minority community was a part of the attack on Thursday night. A probe is in progress,” said Darbhanga SSP Satyavir Singh to this newspaper.
RJD leader Vijay Prakash said: “Such murders of RJD and BJP workers by criminals show that claims of the Nitish Kumar-led government about good governance are all lies.”
