CALCUTTA, 27 July 2004 — The massacre of ten Muslims by unidentified killers in Jagdishpur Kothi village has jolted Bihar’s ruling Rashtriya Janata Dal Party whose survival depends on the Yadav-Muslim votebank.
With provincial elections in Bihar due next year, RJD leader and federal Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav rushed yesterday to Jagdispur Kothi with a package of sops for victims’ survivors.
Lalu announced a compensation of 100,000 rupees for the next of kin of each victim from the Bihar Chief Minister’s Relief Fund. CM Rabri Devi is Lalu’s wife.
Lalu, who arrived at the head of a 50-car convoy, also handed over 100,000 rupees to the next of kin of each survivor on behalf of the RJD.
Lalu announced that the criminals who killed innocent Muslims — all the victims of Saturday’s deadly massacre were Muslim beggars — would be brought to justice.
He also ordered the district administration to provide free ration to the victims’ survivors for six months and promised them free houses to live in and agricultural land to earn their livelihood without begging for alms.
The police suspect the involvement of Ram Shankar Choudary, a dreaded mafia don of Gopalgunj in the massacre. Ram Shankar apparently suspected the beggars of being police informers and decided to kill them.
It is also being speculated that the killings were masterminded by extremist offshoots of the Hindu fundamentalist Bharatiya Janata Party to drive a wedge between Muslims and Yadavs in the run-up to the 2005 Bihar state elections.
The RJD has kept the BJP at bay in election thanks to Yadav-Muslim unity in a state which witnessed frequent sectarian violence but has been by and large peaceful under RJD rule.
Lalu met two survivors, Khurshid and Mumtaz, who told him that they too would have been killed if the attackers had not run out of bullets.
“Before fleeing, the killers told us that they had exhausted their ammunition but would return soon to finish the incomplete job”, Mumtaz told Lalu.
