Bihar MLA Sunil Pandey of the ruling JD(U) and his brother MLC Hulas Pandey have brought fresh embarrassment for chief minister Nitish Kumar after the two controversial politicians were booked for demanding `1 crore as extortion money from a construction company head.
The police in the southern town of Sasaram lodged an FIR against Sunil Pandey, the MLA from Tarari whose official name is Narendra Pandey, and his brother Hulas Pandey, an MLC, on Thursday for forcibly entering the house of Dayanidhi Singh, owner of Sibitech Construction Private Limited and demanding `1 crore from him. Three others who accompanied the two bahubali (muscle-powered) legislators were also named in the FIR, said Rohtas district SP Vikas Vaibhav.
Sunil Pandey, one of Bihar’s most colourful and infamous politicians, was acquitted by the Patna high court acquitted five months ago from charges of abducting neurosurgeon Ramesh Chandra in 2003. Pandey and six others were convicted and awarded life sentence in the abduction case by a Patna lower court in September 2008.
Pandey made incredibly atypical news in March 2009 when he earned a Ph.D from the VKS University in Bihar’s Ara for his research on “Lord Mahavir’s philosophy of non-violence”.
The latest case against Pandey and his brother are being seen as a dent in Nitish Kumar’s ongoing efforts to bring credible probity in Bihar’s politics by a string of steps to eliminate corruption and crime and enhancing bureaucratic efficiency and judicial performances. In his complaint to the police, Mr Dayanidhi Singh also alleged that the Pandey brothers, who allegedly entered his Saket Nagar house with guns, held his family at gunpoint and tried to force him to register his house in Hulas Pandey’s name. The two politicians allegedly took Mr Singh’s signature on a blank sheet of paper forcibly, he alleged.
But MLC Hulas Pandey refuted the charges and said Mr Singh, with whom he earlier worked together as a contractor, owed him money and did not want to pay back. “This is a false and fabricated case. Others who lent him money have also faced similar cases,” said Pandey.