MLA's kangaroo court could have caused murder

Chandrapura, March 22

Relatives of Santosh Pandey alleged that Dumri MLA and JMM man Jagarnath Mahto's unchecked habit of holding extralegal Jan Adalats resulted in the death of the youngster in Bokaro district on Thursday morning.

Jagarnath, now the JMM's candidate from Giridih Lok Sabha constituency, and elder brother Baidyanath Mahto are among nine named in the FIR on the murder of Santosh (25), filed on the basis of a complaint by the victim's brother.

Santosh's family alleges that Jagarnath, who hails from the same village as theirs, ordered the youngster's execution in a Jan Adalat held in front of his house. They also allege that Santosh was taken to the D.V.C. Hospital in Chandrapura in the MLA's car, with one of the legislator's bodyguards travelling along.

The police, which reached the hospital shortly after Santosh was admitted, failed to record a dying declaration despite the fact that Santosh was at the hospital for more than an hour and talked to the reporter of a television news channel before succumbing to suspected internal injuries.

Baidyanath was one of the five people named by Santosh in a statement given to the Bermo reporter of regional Hindi channel Kashish News minutes before he breathed his last. However, Santosh did not name Jagarnath when asked to name those who assaulted him. The district police, which arrested two of the girl's relatives on Friday, has moved to obtain the channel's footage.

Santosh, an Arts graduate, was beaten to death for eloping with a girl from Simratoli, a hamlet of his village, Alargo. "I fell in love with a girl whom I was taking tuitions for. When I got a job in Chennai, she said she wanted to come with me. I refused, but she insisted. If she were here, she would explain it to you," said Santosh in his statement to the news channel.

Both Santosh and the girl - rumoured to be a minor - are brahmins, but belong to different castes. Jagarnath is a Kurmi, the dominant caste. "He sided with the girl's family because they live in the same hamlet," said Anant Lal Pandey, fifth of nine siblings of whom Santosh was youngest, who filed the police complaint naming Jagarnath.

Anant Lal alleges that his brother and the girl were taken forcibly by the girl's family from Chennai. They had eloped on on March 12, with the girl's family noticing her disappearance the next day.

"When someone informed me that my son had been picked up by the girl's family, I rushed to the mukhiya, pleaded with him to ensure that my son is safe," said Santosh's mother Jayanti Devi.

Her fears were not unfounded. This newspaper has reported on Jagarnath's Adalats, where he has ordered that errant husbands be tied to to trees and has caned alleged molestors of local women. The police are yet to file an FIR against him based on these Adalats as the legislator's victims do not come forward to register complaints.

Whether the legislator was home at the time when Santosh was assaulted is a matter of dispute - there are three versions in circulation - but it is clear that his assaulters took moral authority from the violent nature of the Adalats.

"This Adalat happened at the site in front of the legislator's house where they are held, but much before the time when these meetings are usual time - which is at about nine in the morning. So, there were only a handful of people present when Baidyanath Mahto presided over the meeting and declared that Santosh be beaten to death. Later, when the beatings continued, the legislator ran out of his house and ordered that the boy be rushed to the hospital," said a villager at the cremation site on the banks of the river Damodar.

Anant Lal disagreed. "Baidyanath is nothing without his brother. Jagarnath was there; he ordered that my brother be killed," he claimed.

Bhubaneshwar Mahto, mukhiya of Alargo, claimed that the legislator was not even home at the time of the assault. "He was in Bokaro, collecting his nomination papers. This is a conspiracy hatched by this opponents to defame him; to try and weaken his winning position this election," he said.

Jagarnath Mahto, talking over phone, said he was not in the village on the morning of Santosh's assault. "I was not at home; I was not even aware of any Jan Adalat. I can't speak for my brother. If he is guilty, he should be sent to jail," he said.

No more arrests were made in the case on Saturday. Bokaro's Superintendent of Police Jitendra Singh said the post-mortem report is awaited.