Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar on Saturday handed over the investigations into the sensational murder of BJP legislator Raj Kishore Kesri by a lady teacher to the CBI following a letter to him from deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi of the BJP and increasing attacks from multiple quarters.
DGP Neelmani told this newspaper that a notification was issued with the recommendation that the CBI should investigate the Purnea MLA’s murder by knife attack in public on the morning of January 4. “Following the notification, the investigations into case no. 4/11 lodged at Khazanchihat police station in Purnea under Sections 302/120(B) of the IPC would now be conducted by the CBI,” he said.
The chief minister’s decision came after a letter written to him by Mr Modi urging that the probe into the case be handed over to the CBI for greater transparency. Mr Modi, currently in Guwahati where he is attending the BJP’s national executive conclave, had earlier ruled out the CBI probe, but he wrote this letter before leaving Patna on Friday.
Mr Modi’s statements just hours after Kesri’s murder had snowballed into a controversy, prompting the Opposition parties to seek his resignation for a fair probe and calls from women’s organisations for a probe by an agency other than the state police.
Mr Modi had described the accused school principal, Rupam Pathak, now in judicial custody, as a blackmailer because she had stuck to her allegations of rape against the MLA even after withdrawing those charges twice in 2010.
The Opposition RJD, LJP and Congress on Saturday criticised Nitish Kumar’s silence in the face of growing allegations that his government was trying to victimise the accused woman in order to hide her sexual exploitation and persecution by the MLA she eventually killed and his secretary, Vipin Rai, yet to be arrested.