Amid the suspicion of the involvement of former Siwan terror and four time RJD MP Mohammad Shahabuddin behind Siwan-based journalist Rajdeo Rajan’s murder, the Siwan police on Sunday arrested his close aide Upendra Singh. The police had rounded up four people but released two of them after initial interrogation. Singh, who is also accused in the murder of political activist and Siwan BJP MP’s local representative Srikant Bharti in 2014, was now on bail.
The intelligence sources revealed that Shahabuddin, who is behind bars for over ten years and languishing in Siwan jail, had reportedly issued a hit list naming 23 persons with an intention to eliminate the Rajan, the bureau chief if Hindi daily Hindustan in Siwan figured in the list prepared in 2007. Bharti who was murdered about two years back too had figured in that list. The special branch, a wing of intelligence bureau had also ussued alert in 2007.
Expectedly, the State Government is under sharp attack from the Opposition after a spate of high profile murders of student and scribe. Many Opposition leaders on Sunday rushed to Siwan to meet the bereaved family.
The chorus of the return of Jungle Raj reached a new level with the cold-blooded murder of Siwan-based journalist Rajdeo Rajan followed with the killing of a UP policeman in a running train near Buxar. Only last week a teenager Aditya Sachdeva was shot dead in a road rage allegedly by a youth Rocky Yadav, son of JD(U) MlC Manorma Devi, now suspended from the party but evading her arrest.
Thousands of people participated in the funeral of Rajan. In Patna too the journalists staged a protest march to condemn the killing.
Siwan police said it would soon crack the muder case and interrogating two suspects. Police was also obtaining footage of CCTV cameras installed near railway station where Rajan wad shot dead. Five bullets were fired of which one hit his forhead and another in his neck.
What is mire shocking that inspite of the killing of a senior journalist there had been no word from CM Nitish Kumar or his deputy Tejashwi Yadav.