Bihar Director General of Police P K Thakur, said the police enquiry into the murder of Siwan-based journalist Rajdeo Ranjan was going on in right direction.
He said the police raided house of the main accused within two hours of the crime, but he had managed to escape with his family. Unless the shooters are arrested, he said, it would not be possible to pin point who hired the killers are and who financed them. The police would continue the investigation until the case is taken over by the CBI, he added. Thakur, who was present at the presser held by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Monday, said he was not in a position to reveal everything to the media at this stage. The police, he said, were focusing on many aspects including the mobile phone of the journalist, its contents have been searched and under investigation with whom Ranjan was in touch till his last.
The CM said whosoever be found responsible and how powerful be might be, could not escape the hands of law. “We treat criminal as criminal without caring his connections,” he said.
On the alleged role of RJD strongman and former MP Mohammad Shahabuddin who is in jail for over a decade, the DGP admitted that in December 2014 the Special Branch of Bihar police had an unverified information coming through a sweeper that a hit list of 23 people had been issued from the Siwan jail which included names of journalist Ranjan and political activist Bharti, both murdered, and an alert had been issued. He also said that recently no mobile phone had been recovered from Siwan jail where Shahabuddin is lodged.
Thakur said the police were collecting evidence and trying to retrieve the footage of the CCTV cameras installed by private parties near the killing spot. It is reported that the concerning footage were deleted before police grabbed it.
Apart from the arrest of Shahabuddin's one time shooter Upendra Singh, the police picked up Shahabuddin's close aide Munshi Mian, from the RJD strongman's native village Pratappur in Siwan.
Meanwhile, the Gaya court on Monday rejected the anticipatory bail plea of fugitive MlC Manorma Devi against whom warrant of arrest had been issued and police conducting raids to arrest her. She is absconding for the last six days after the police and excise department seized her house on the charge of the recovery of IMFl bottles from there. Notices have been pasted on that house proclaiming that the property could be confiscated.