July 27, 1998

Seven people connected with the fodder scam have died unnatural deaths over the past two years. Police say it's a coincidence, but there are few takers.

By Sanjay Kumar Jha

It was drizzling on the evening of July 4 when Uma Shankar Prasad, an employee of the Bihar Animal Husbandry Department (AHD) left his office at Doranda in Ranchi district. Anxious to beat the downpour that seemed imminent, Prasad quickly kick-started his scooter and headed for home. He never reached there. As his scooter neared the Bihar Military Police camp, it suddenly stalled. Prasad pushed the scooter to the roadside and opened the side panel to find out what was wrong. Suddenly a speeding truck came from behind and rammed into him, killing him on the spot. The police logbook shows Prasad as yet another victim of a hit-and-run case. But was he? The CBI does not think so. For he was not just another employee of the AHD, but was assisting the CBI in the probe into the Rs 950 crore fodder scam.

Since the fodder scam first surfaced in January 1996, Prasad is the seventh person connected with it to have died an unnatural death. Just three weeks earlier, Vivekanand Sharma, a Samata Party leader who was the first petitioner to move the Ranchi bench of the Patna High Court seeking a CBI probe into the fodder scam, was shot dead near his residence in Ranchi. The mysterious deaths of some AHD employees and others connected with the fodder scam have caused alarm in the state, prompting intense speculation in political and administrative circles. The questions on everyone's lips: Are these deaths mere accidents? Or are they part of an insidious plot to eliminate those who could give damaging evidence to the CBI, implicating influential leaders in the state?

Sharma was a key figure in the investigation into the scam. Way back in 1995, he had sent a petition to the Vigilance Department, detailing the misdeeds of some AHD officials and suppliers and even listed the properties they had amassed. With Sharma's killing, the CBI may well have lost a key witness who was believed to be privy to substantial information on the scam. Though the police have arrested one person in connection with Sharma's killing, Ranchi SSP Amitabh Chaudhary says he is not connected with the fodder scam. Curiously, the case diary relating to Sharma's death lists land dispute as the reason behind the killing, prompting local officials to accuse the police of trying to hush up the case.

If there is indeed a sinister pattern to the deaths, it can be traced back to September 1996, when a vehicle transporting some of the accused in the fodder scam was fired upon by some unidentified persons in Patna. No one was injured in the firing. Two months later, Lala Vishwa Mohan, an assistant director in the AHD at Jamshedpur, was killed after he was run over by a speeding truck. One of the accused in the scam, Mohan had always maintained that he was being falsely implicated and had even threatened to turn an approver.

A month later, on December 20, Manu Munda, the driver of Birsa Oraon, an accused in the scam, was abducted and killed the following day. Munda had allegedly been given Rs 1 crore by Oraon and police say that the driver may have been abducted for ransom. But another theory doing the rounds is that Munda had "inside information" about the scam and was hence killed. The din over Munda's death was yet to die when six days later, J.N. Tiwari, an AHD officer and another scam accused, was run over by a truck in Daltonganj district.

The most gory fate awaited AHD supplier Harish Khandelwal, co-accused in five cases lodged in connection with the fodder scam. On the morning of May 7, 1997, a railway gangman discovered a headless corpse near the tracks in Dhanbad district. The severed head was discovered in a bush some distance away. Some papers and two blood-soaked suicide notes in the dead man's pockets helped identity him. The police described it as a case of suicide. The 38-year-old supplier had been summoned from ranchi to Dhanbad by the CBI for interrogation in connection with a case in which former chief minister and Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Laloo Prasad Yadav, former chief minister Jagannath Mishra and 55 others have been named as accused.

Khandelwal's brother Sanjay says it couldn't have been suicide because the victim had been helping the CBI in the investigation and had accepted that he could be jailed. After all, Khandelwal himself had sought time till May 8, from the CBI in order to furnish more details and submit relevant documents. The suicide notes alleged "mental and physical torture" by a CBI official, which seems strange because Khandelwal had yet to be interrogated by the agency. This has made the CBI suspect that the notes were planted on him.

The bizarre routine of unnatural deaths, however, didn't end there. On May 15, Ram Raj Singh, a doctor in the AHD, was travelling in a cycle-rickshaw when it was hit by a truck in Patna. Singh and his 18-year-old daughter Pratima died instantly. Though he did not figure in the list of accused, there was speculation in Patna that the CBI had wanted to interrogate him.

Meanwhile, the disappearance since January 1997 of Laloo's former personal assistant Mukul Kishore Kapoor has also spawned a spate of rumours. While some believe that he might have been eliminated, sources in the CBI say Kapoor was probably being forcibly kept in hiding by the accused, who were scared that he could spill the beans. Says leader of the Opposition Sushil Kumar Modi: "Kapoor had accompanied Laloo on his trips to the US and Singapore and if Laloo has stashed his unaccounted wealth anywhere, Kapoor would know."

Police say the deaths have nothing to do with the scam. "It's just a coincidence that many of them had been AHD employees," says a senior police officer. Though sources in the CBI discern a design behind them, Joint Director U.N. Biswas, who has been pursuing Laloo ever since the scam surfaced, says, "The local police is seized of the matter. It will be difficult to hazard any guess about the motives behind the killing till a thorough inquiry is held."

The CBI is not probing the killings, despite the demands of the state's opposition leaders. Says Samata leader Shivanand Tewari, another petitioner: "It cannot be a mere coincidence and the deaths should be investigated by the CBI." Janata Dal leader Laxmi Sahu says the victims might have had explosive information about the scam and about the people involved in it. "They might have been eliminated by the aggrieved party." That perhaps is the CBI's worst fear -- that the "aggrieved party" being the state's powerful and unscrupulous politicians, all evidence related to the scam, human or otherwise, may be wiped out before long.

© Living Media India Ltd