Bring the BJP-Backed Ranveer Sena Terrorists To Justice Arrest Terrorists and Top Politicians Exposed by Cobrapost Sting and Amir Das Report

The Cobrapost sting operation has confirmed what was already an open secret. The terrorist feudal outfit Ranveer Sena, backed by the Bhartiya Janata Party, slaughtered poor labourers from the Dalits and oppressed castes in Bihar in the 1990s, mostly unarmed women and children, to teach them a lesson for their struggles for wages and dignity and political assertion in the form of the CPI(ML) Liberation. The police and administration under the then Chief Ministers Laloo Prasad and then Rabri Devi, colluded with the terrorists, allowing them to massacre with impunity. The Commission headed by Justice (Retd.) Amir Das set up to probe the political linkages of the Ranveer Sena, received no cooperation from the Rabri Devi regime, and when it prepared its report in the face of all odds and was on the point of submitting its findings, it was disbanded by the JDU-BJP Government headed by Nitish Kumar.

In a series of shocking verdicts between 2012-2013, the Patna High Court overturned sessions court verdicts and acquitted each and every one of those who had been convicted for the massacres at Bathani Tola, Laxmanpur Bathe, and Miyanpur. In 2014, a sessions court acquitted all the accused in the Shankarbigha massacre. The Patna High Court in the Bathani Tola case held that eyewitnesses were ‘lying’ and ‘spinning tales’, and had held eyewitnesses in the Laxmanpur Bathe case to be ‘unreliable.’ The Cobrapost reporter caught some of the acquitted men on his secret camera, in which they openly, brazenly boast of having perpetrated the massacres, and also confirm what the witnesses had maintained – that the mastermind of the massacres was Brahmeshwar ‘mukhiya’, the Ranveer Sena chief. Six Ranveer Sena commanders caught on camera by Cobrapost, openly and readily give details of their role in the Bathani Tola, Bathe, Sarthua, Miyanpur, Shankarbigha and Ekwari massacres.

How come the police failed to do what an investigative journalist has done? How come these terrorists have escaped justice and enjoy impunity?

Some of the answers to these questions also can be found in the Cobrapost interviews of the Ranveer Sena terrorists. These terrorists declare that powerful politicians – including former Prime Minister Chandrashekhar, former Finance Minister and senior BJP leader Yashwant Sinha, former HRD Minister from the BJP Murli Manohar Joshi, BJP leaders Sushil Modi and CP Thakur and several others – helped them procure sophisticated arms to which only the Indian Army has access. They received training from Army men – either retired or on leave. They also say that criminal politician Anand Mohan Singh and JDU leader Shivanand Tiwari offered them material support. They say that Murli Manohar Joshi intimidated the investigative officers and LJP MP Arun Kumar helped them escape the police.

It is also significant that the Ranveer Sena terrorists tell Cobrapost that theirs were not stealthy operations. The date of the massacres were often announced in advance, to strike terror – and the Bathani Tola massacre, thus announced, was even conducted in broad daylight. Survivors of the massacres told Cobrapost how police and prosecution in the Laloo-Rabri regimes failed to act even when warned that massacres had been announced. Police posts a stone’s throw away from the targeted villages would look the other way until the massacre was over. Evidence was destroyed by the police, and prosecution deliberately weakened cases.

The Cobrapost has also spoken to Justice (Retd.) Amir Das, and has also acquired a copy of the Amir Das Commission report. Justice Amir Das states that witnesses deposed before his Commission, testifying to the involvement of several prominent politicians, mostly from the BJP. This is why his Commission was abruptly wound up by Nitish Kumar, when the JDU-BJP Government came to power.

It is clear that from police to prosecution to judiciary, from the Laloo-Rabri regime to Nitish regime to the BJP, all are implicated in the massacre of the poor and the massacre of justice.

Narendra Modi talks of ‘jungle raj’ in Bihar – but can he deny that the BJP-backed Ranveer Sena terrorists were the most dangerous man-eaters in the jungle, that preyed on the weakest, the poorest, women and children? Will BJP’s Giriraj Singh tell us why he called the terrorist Brahmeshwar Singh – mastermind of all the massacres – Bihar’s Gandhi?

Nitish Kumar is trying to claim that the decision to disband the Amir Das Commission was taken before he assumed power. This is a false and specious argument: after all, if so, why did he not reverse that decision and refuse to announce the disbanding? Why in the past decade has he refused to re-promulgate the Amir Das Commission in spite of CPI(ML)’s demands to this effect?

The truth is that Nitish Kumar disbanded the Commission that would have revealed the truth about BJP’s backing of the Ranveer Sena, because he did not want Bihar’s people to ask why he had joined hands with the butchers of Bihar’s poor Dalits, women and children.

Moreover, after Brahmeshwar’s killing, why did Nitish Kumar allow Ranveer Sena goons to go on a rampage in Ara, attacking Dalit hostels? Today, Nitish Kumar claims to be ‘secular’ and against the communal BJP. But it is Nitish Kumar who is responsible for the shameful denial of justice and betrayal of the massacre survivors and victims’ families, because it is he who shielded the communal-casteist BJP by disbanding the Amir Das Commission. And even today, the JDU Administration and BJP leaders today operate in a tacit nexus to shield the perpetrators of the sexual assault on Dalit women at Parbatta: an assault that was organized and led by a local BJP leader.

Those self-proclaimed leaders of Dalits, mahadalits and backward communities of Bihar who are shamelessly allying with the BJP, must answer to Bihar’s people about why they are insulting Bihar’s poor and oppressed by joining hands with their killers.

The struggle for justice must seek the arrest of the Ranveer Sena commanders who have confessed to the massacre; the arrest of all the politicians including BJP top brass who are named by the Ranveer Sena commanders and the Amir Das Commission report; and investigation and arrest of the Army and ex-Army leaders who trained and armed the banned Ranveer Sena terrorists.

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