When Nitish Kumar took oath as the Bihar chief minister, he promised to put an end to the criminalisation of politics. And if you want to do that in Bihar, you start in Siwan. You start with Mohammad Shahabuddin.
This was how probably India's most feared criminal politicians came to be muzzled.
With over 30 cases of murder and other charges pending against him, Shahabuddin had lorded over his home stretch in Bihar for years.
But 2007 saw him being convicted for life in a kidnapping case and a two-year sentence in an assault case.
If you are one of those sceptics who wonder how different a Shahabuddin in jail is from a Shahabuddin out in the open is, check this out:
In the 1980s he took on the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) and earned the sobriquet Shaabu-AK47 for his affection for the assault weapon.
In the 1990s he nipped a CPI-ML resurgence by allegedly killing two students who had come to resurrect the Communist movement.
In the early 2000s he went into an orbit of his own, be it holding kangaroo courts or bullying the police or the possession of weaponry, which the Supreme Court cited, 'not the police, not the paramilitary forces but only the army possesses'.
In jail, all the Saheb of Siwan could muster was vain boasts and threats.
'I know where your family lives. No one will survive,' he is alleged to have threatened a jailer.
'Bahut din se tum logon ki pitai nahin hui hai. Bail hone do peet ke rakh denge (You have not been beaten up for a long time; let me get out on bail, I will thrash you),' he is said to have told another.
'Tadpa tadpa ke maarenge (I will torture you to death),' he allegedly told a policeman.
These only led to more cases registered against him. Not many are scared of the Saheb of Siwan these days.
Photograph: Manan Vatsyayana/AFP/Getty Images
Also read: 3-year jail term for Shahabuddin
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