While Maoists are known to have threatened and attacked Bihar’s politicians, officials and businessmen, now ordinary criminals and
commoners are increasingly being suspected to be using the Maoists’ name to do the same. A Patna shopkeeper’s arrest has pointed at this growing
trend.
When Shankar Sao found that railway officials at Danapur, near Patna, were planning to demolish his rented grocery shop built illegally, he wrote a
threatening letter to Danapur’s additional divisional railway manager (ADRM) S. Randhawa asking him not to demolish the shop. In the letter, Sao
identified himself as a Maoist area commander from the Maoist-affected Jehanabad district and threatened that the ADRM would be killed by an
explosion in his vehicle if the shop was demolished.
Unlike in cases of serious threats like this issued by real Maoists, policemen easily solved this one and arrested Sao on Friday because the man,
who had failed to get a job in the railways despite having paid `4 lakh as bribe, had not only written his own mobile number in his letter but had
also enclosed a photograph of himself in it. He had also himself reached the ADRM’s residence to hand over the letter to the ADRM’s servant.