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STATES: BIHAR
Badland Badshah
As India's most wanted politician evades arrest, more details come out
on his alleged links with Kashmiri militants and Pakistani agents
By Sayantan Chakravarty
The pursuers were
elsewhere when Mohammed Shahabuddin, the Rashtriya Janata Dal MP from
Siwan, drove out in a white maruti zen from his Maulana Azad Road residence
in Delhi on May 16. A few hours later, he was aboard an Air-India flight
to Jeddah. Down below, it was a moment of acute embarrassment for the
investigators from the Intelligence Bureau.
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| THE GODFATHER: The MP (centre) in Siwan, with men
alleged to be his militia during his heydays |
Shahabuddin's vanishing act happened at a time
when the Union Home Ministry was considering the police's proposals for
his arrest. The police also wanted to put up Look Out circulars at all
international airports in the country. An assistant at the MP's residence
in Delhi says, "Shahabuddin is out of the country. He will return
some-time later this month."
The ministry was given enough reasons for a
clearance on the arrest. According to intelligence reports, Shahabuddin
has links with key ISI operatives in Nepal and Kashmir besides being involved
in 30-odd criminal cases. The most damning reason, however, came on May
5 with the arrest of six underworld hitmen by the Delhi Police in connection
with a plot to kill Tarun Tejpal, CEO of Tehelka.com. Detailed interrogation
reports of the gang leader, Bhupinder Tyagi, made available to INDIA TODAY,
suggest that Shahabuddin was the mastermind behind the plot (see interview).
The Delhi Police also secured a 14-day remand
for the six hitmen on the grounds that sustained interrogation was needed
for the arrest of Shahabuddin and his brother-in-law Izaz-ul-Haq, a minister
in Bihar's Rabri Devi government. Says ACP Rajbir Singh of the Special
Cell, Delhi Police, whose crack team arrested Tyagi and his associates:
"We think Shahabuddin has connections with people who are out to
destroy this nation."
Tyagi's signed confession, which could be straight
out of the pages of a crime thriller, makes Shahabuddin's story even darker.
According to Tyagi, whenever the badshah of Bihar's badlands moves around
in Siwan, he's accompanied by a private militia of 25 men, all armed with
AK-47s. It's an altogether different matter that the weapon is such a
rarity that the Delhi Police is willing to shell out Rs 5 lakh per piece
in the grey market. The group, alleges Tyagi, carry with it pistols, carbines
and SLRs. It's a formidable private army.
The members of the militia, all young men, are
well looked after. They even have exclusive housing facilities-a double-storey
complex in Pratappur opposite Shahabuddin's bungalow. Here each morning
several rounds are allegedly emptied by them as part of their regular
firing practice. The Pra-tappur complex is also a ransom hole where, according
to Tyagi, kidnap victims were confined on numerous occasions in the past.
And the militia has easy mobility. Shahabuddin's fleet of vehicles includes
a grey Tata Safari, a white Ambassador, two Commander jeeps, a silver
Bolero and a grey Maruti van, and all of them have the same registration
number-0786.
Going by local legends, Shahabuddin's boys don't
have to blindfold their prey: a look at the captors and the victims break
down. So daunting is the task of taking Shahabuddin on that recently a
SP
of an adjoining district wrote to the Bihar DGP seeking police protection
from the MP. The reply was terse: the SP would have
to organise his own security.
Tyagi claimed that he accompanied Shahabuddin
on several occasions to the killing fields of Siwan. He also claims that
his assignments included the murders of an advocate and his wife, a man
who had failed to return a .9 mm pistol borrowed from the
MP and two Muslim youth who had also failed to return loaned weapons.
On each occasion, says Tyagi, the body of the victim was flung onto the
highway. That was Shahabuddin's way of making terror a roadshow.
Of Shahabuddin's alleged links with Kashmiri
militants, Tyagi claims he once accompanied the MP to Sopore where they
met several militants. The talks centred on the supply of arms and ammunition.
"When militants wanted to hand over supplies there itself, Shaha-buddin
refused, saying that the army would carry out strict checkings,"
says Tyagi. For the Tejpal operation, Shaha-buddin, alleges Tyagi, visited
Birganj and Kathmandu several times, and met chief ISI operatives, including
former Nepal minister Salim Ansari and someone code-named Jain whom external
intelligence agencies are trying to identify. Then too, the talks were
mostly about arms supply and fake currency notes. "He's in regular
touch with ISI top guns based in Kathmandu," says Tyagi.
Still, Shahabuddin has not been chargesheeted
and the police are solely dependant on the word of a hitman. But there
seems to be no masterplan to contain the lawmaker who is turning out to
be an outlaw.
--With Farzand Ahmed
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