By IANS
Patna : Bihar opposition leader Rabri Devi was arrested here Friday along with several Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) legislators for disrupting law and order during a shutdown called by the party to protest against the attacks on journalists by ruling Janata Dal-United (JD-U) legislator Anant Singh and his henchmen.
This is the first time that Rabri Devi, a former chief minister and wife of Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav, has protested aggressively on the roads against the two-year-old National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government led by Nitish Kumar.
She led hundreds of RJD workers and leaders from her official residence at Circular Road to Bailey Road and was seen shouting slogans against the attacks on media persons with a green flag in her hand.
During her protest, she said it was shameful that journalists were not safe and free to work in the state.
Rabri Devi and other RJD legislators were arrested at Dak Bungalow square, the busiest crossing in the heart of Patna.
Normal life was badly affected in the state with clashes between protestors and the police reported from dozens of places. Nearly 3,000 protestors have been arrested across the state during the shutdown called by the RJD.
The Congress, the Communist Party of India-Marxist Leninist (CPI-ML) and the Lok Janshakti Party promptly expressed support to the RJD-sponsored strike.
“Hundreds of activists belonging to the opposition were arrested for disrupting law and order. There were reports of clashes between supporters of the strike and the police at several places across the state,” A.R. Sinha, the state police chief, told IANS.
Schools and business establishments were closed in most of the districts and only a few buses plied on the roads.
“Traffic was paralysed due to blockade of roads and national highways at several places by protestors,” a police official said.
Security personnel were deployed in large numbers across the state to avoid any untoward incident.
President of the Bihar Public School and Children’s Welfare Association D.K. Singh said that all the private schools remained closed Friday due to the shutdown.
Anant Singh and his supporters had beaten up two journalists who had come to interview him and then attacked several more media persons when they protested against the first attack Thursday.
As political parties condemned the brazen assault, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar ordered the administration to act – albeit five hours late. The police arrested Anant Singh and four others including his personal and official bodyguards.
The chief judicial magistrate here sent Anant Singh – who is seen as a terror in Bihar and who faces over two dozen criminal charges including that of murder – to Patna’s Beur Jail until Nov 13.
“The state government was virtually forced to send Anant Singh to jail after the hue and cry by media persons and opposition leaders,” RJD leader Shakeel Ahmad Khan said.
It all began when NDTV journalist Prakash Singh and his cameraman Habib Ali went to Anant Singh’s house for his reaction to allegations that he had raped and murdered a young woman, Reshma Khatoon.
The woman had sent a letter to the chief minister, police officials and media persons before her death, accusing Anant Singh, his associate Mukesh Singh and a bodyguard of the legislator of raping her.
Prakash Singh and Habib Ali said they were held hostage for two hours and mercilessly beaten by Anant Singh and his men. Both men were later rushed to a hospital.
“Anant Singh beat us mercilessly and also abused us,” a shaken Prakash Singh said.
According to witnesses, when other journalists marched to Anant Singh’s residence to denounce the incident, they too came under attack.
The journalists said Anant Singh’s men poured out of his house and beat them with bamboo sticks. As the journalists fled, stones were thrown at them. Some supporters of Anant Singh fired shots in the air.
As news of the attack spread, Nitish Kumar – who has always considered Anant Singh a confidant – became incommunicado. He later said he would ask the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to probe the rape-cum-murder allegation against the JD-U legislator.
In her letter to Nitish Kumar, Reshma, in her early 20s, had alleged that she faced danger to her life.
Reshma’s brother told a TV channel that his sister was raped and killed by Anant Singh. He claimed that the legislator had told him that his sister’s body had been dumped at Patel Nagar, a middle-class locality.
The police later recovered the body of a young woman from the area, suspected to be of Reshma, stuffed in a sack. Her letter was found with the body.
Anant Singh, a legislator from Mokama, is known as ‘Chhote Sarkar’ in the area. In 2004, he had brandished an AK-47 rifle in public, although private possession of the assault rifle is illegal.