Every time Nitish Kumar takes oath as Bihar Chief Minister after winning Assem-bly polls, a man in Jehanabad loses one of his fingers.
On Friday too when Kumar’s mega swearing-in ceremony at Gandhi Maidan in Patna ended, this man in his mid-40s chopped off one of his fingers and offered it to a local deity.
Anil Sharma, who is popularly known as Ali Baba, has so far chopped off three fingers of his left hand and offered them to the local deity Goraiya Baba in his village Vena, 2 km from Kako and 10 km from Jehanabad. He cut his first finger in 2005 and the second one in 2010.
“This is way of expressing my sentiments,” said Sharma, showing his bandaged middle finger. The ‘seared’ baby finger and ring finger are also testimony to his craziness.
“He is not mentally deranged. But every time Nitish is sworn-in he becomes highly excited and happy,” said his elder brother Bhola Sharma. Anil Sharma or Ali Baba has no family of his own. He did not marry and lives in his brother’s home. To eke out a livelihood, he has two cows and sells milk.
On Sunday, Sharma rushed to Patna with a marigold garland to greet the man for whom he has so far sacrificed three fingers. “I was told he was not well,” he said.
On Friday, his elder brother Bhola, nephew Bipin Kumar and other family members besides the neighbours were alert and sternly told Anil that they would not allow him to cut his finger.
His neighbour lalan Sharma said, “We knew he will go ahead with his plan so we kept a close watch on him since morning. He was calm and quiet as we tried hard to dissuade him. But he appeared adamant and told us he will do what he wanted to do.”
Bipin, who works in a pharmaceutical company in Bhopal, said, “I went out to take a bath, suddenly Chacha ji disappeared and soon we heard his screams. He was seen bleeding profusely from his hand and running towards the end of the village where some vermillion-marked stones are kept under a banyan tree. This is called Goraiya Baba Sthan. After he offered his chop-ped piece of middle finger there we took him to primary health centre at Kako for first aid.”
A local scribe in Kako Tabish Imam, showed newspapers clipping of November 20 in which he had reported that Ali Baba would cut his finger once again. “But the local administration just ignored it,” he said and added that in 2010 when he chopped his second finger and Nitish came to know about it, the CM expressed his concern and displeasure.
Some local officials at the directive of the CMO had visited him and chided him. This time, nobody from the administration has so far visited him.
looking as if he registered some big victory, Sharma said, “Nobody can deter me from expressing my moment of extreme pleasure. When I heard Nitish is going to be the CM for the third time, I cannot express it in words how happy I was.”
When inquired about his alias, Bhola said Anil was earlier a bus driver and his colleagues had started calling him Ali Baba.
Villagers said that sometimes back Anil had threatened to commit suicide if Nitish did not become CM. Asked if he would cut his index finger too in 2020 if Nitish becomes CM for the fourth time, Anil said, “Who knows I will remain alive or not five years later.”