FOLLOWING the Bathe verdict, Justice (Retd) Amir Das who had headed a Commission of Enquiry set up after the Bathe massacre to identify the political patrons of the Ranveer Sena said, “the masterminds of the Bathe massacre are in power in Bihar today.”

The Ranveer Sena was known to have BJP and Sangh Parivar backing; during the debate in the Bihar Assembly on the Ranveer Sena's Bathani Tola massacre of 1996, then CM Laloo Yadav had placed a leaflet by the Sena calling for votes for BJP candidates. A Central Investigation Team (constituted after the Bathani Tola massacre) found that an RJD MLA from Mokama, Dilip Singh, had supplied sophisticated arms to the Ranveer Sena. In the wake of outraged protests following the Bathe massacre, and widespread allegations of political backing for the Ranveer Sena, the Government headed by Rabri Devi set up the Justice Amir Das Commission to probe the political linkages of the Ranveer Sena.

The Commission complained of non-cooperation even from the RJD Government. In 2006, when the Commission was on the point of preparing its final Report and had requested for a final extension of its tenure, the JD(U)-BJP alliance headed by Nitish Kumar disbanded the Commission in one of its first actions after it came to power.

According to Justice Amir Das, his Report had the evidence to indict 42 political leaders across the political spectrum, mostly from the BJP and JD(U) but also the RJD and Congress; leaders including BJP leaders like the present Deputy CM of Bihar – Sushil Kumar Modi and former Union Minister C P Thakur and former RJD Minister Shivanand Tiwari who is currently the JD(U) spokesperson. In response to a petition by the CPI(ML), the Patna High Court had then ordered that the findings of the Amir Das Commission be made public – an order that has been ignored.

The Nitish Government, in blatant betrayal of his poll promises of land reform and his rhetoric of ‘mahadalits’ and ‘most-backwards’, has essentially remained loyal to the traditional feudal support base of the JD(U)-BJP, and has proved that loyalty by disbanding the Amir Das Commission and jettisoning the recommendations of the Land Reforms Commission set up by his own Government.

In Nitish’s Bihar, 10 mahadalits are sentenced to death for the Amausi massacre (Khagaria district) while perpetrators of feudal atrocities against dalits and the rural poor go scot free. The hatred shown by the police to the poor Muslims at Forbesganj is reminiscent to what was seen at Bathani Tola.

It is ironical that today, the forces which patronised the medieval barbarism and feudal reaction in the form of the Ranveer Sena, are in power, being feted by the corporate media as messiahs of ‘development’ and ‘progress.’ Bathani Tola is a reminder of the real face of the BJP-JD(U) combine, which masquerades behind the talk of mahadalit empowerment and corporate ‘development.’

Calling the bluff of Nitish’s slogan of ‘Nyay ke saath vikas’ (Development with justice), the CPI(ML) will conduct a month-long Nyay Yatra from 22 April. The statewide campaign will link the massacre sites in Shahabad and Magadh region with other sites of feudal-patriarchal violence and state brutality elsewhere in Bihar and seek to bring together all justice-loving people in a shared quest for justice. The CPI(ML) will also challenge the Bihar HC verdict in the Supreme Court, and will seek Supreme Court intervention to ensure justice in the range of Ranveer Sena massacre cases in Bihar.