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Ranvir Sena strikes again, kills 12 persons in Gaya

Soroor Ahmed in Patna

In a move fraught with serious political implications, Ranvir Sena men gunned down 12 persons -- seven from backward communities and five dalits -- in the Sandani village of Gaya district last night.

Two groups of armed men dressed in military fatigues attacked Zahirbigha and Khagribigha tolas (hamlets) of Sandani village under the Belaganj police station, more than 100 km south of Patna.

Each group comprised about 50 men carrying sophisticated firearms. Eight of those killed belonged to Zahirbigha while the rest were from Khagribigha.

The latest massacre by the Ranvir Sena, a private army of Bhumihars, a landed upper-caste community of Bihar, is likely to give a new dimension to agrarian violence. The killers, perhaps deliberately, targeted Yadavs as well this time. Six of those killed belonged to the Yadav community while a seventh was a kahar, an extremely backward class of palanquin-bearers.

Two of those killed were women. Besides, a 10-year-old girl and an 80-year-old man were also killed.

The killers fled after the massacre, raising slogans like "Jai Sitaram", "Ranvir Baba ki jai" and "Senari ka badla le liya (We have avenged the killings in Senari)".

(Ranvir Chaudhary was a 19th century Bhumihar folk hero who fought against the Rajput landlords in the central Bihar district of Bhojpur. Ironically, the landed Bhumiihars have named their private army after him.)

The recent battles in the killing fields of central Bihar were essentially Bhumihar versus dalit. But by killing Yadavs, the Bhumihars have taken a calculated risk. Political observers fear this will further escalate violence in the rural hinterland.

The Ranvir Sena wanted to send out a signal that it has not been cowed down by the killing of 35 members of the Bhumihar community in Senari. This is in total contrast to the last such large-scale killing of Bhumihars. The landlords had failed to avenge the incident at Bara (another village in Gaya district) in 1992 where too 35 members of their community were killed. This time, however, they have retaliated in a month.

The Ranvir Sena is believed to have targeted Yadavs as well because some of the Maoist Communist Centre men who carried out the massacre in Senari village of Jehanabad district, belonged to the community.

The latest killings came on the very day the state administration claimed to have made a breakthrough in the Senari massacre and arrested a couple of MCC activists belonging to the Yadav community.

Top police and administrative officials of Gaya district have rushed to Sandani and combing operations are on. But Chief Minister Rabri Devi and Rashtriya Janata Dal president Laloo Prasad Yadav are yet to visit the place.

The killings had their reverberations in the Bihar assembly too, where members of the Opposition, especially those belonging to the Bharatiya Janata Party, were on their feet, accusing the government of again failing to check the massacre.

The assembly had to be adjourned till the lunch recess when BJP members staged a walkout shouting, "Hatyari sarkar hai hai (Down with the killer government)" in protest against Water Resources Minister Jagtanand Singh's remark that the Ranvir Sena enjoys the BJP's patronage. "We do not want to play politics over corpses," Singh thundered.

Curiously, there was utter confusion till mid-afternoon whether the killers belonged to the Ranvir Sena or the leftist extremist groups. Even the state police chief's office could not confirm that. It was only after Jagtanand Singh made his statement during zero hour that it became clear who the killers were.

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