He has been charged with two dozen crimes, voted into parliament three times and even from inside a jail cell Mohammed Shahabuddin reigns supreme over his lawless district where only the potholes outnumber his portraits.
Shahabuddin epitomizes the rough politics in the eastern Indian state of Bihar where candidates for elections that start tomorrow include suspected murderers, alleged rapists and fugitives who somehow manage to file nomination papers.
PHOTO: AP
Shahabuddin, who turns 37 on May 10, the last of five dates of the staggered national election, is in jail pending trial over the murder of Munna Chowdhary, a 17-year-old local political activist whose body was allegedly thrown into the furnace of a brick kiln.
But Shahabuddin remains the undisputed king of Siwan, a dusty town 200km northwest of Bihar's capital Patna, where his deep-set eyes stare out from pictures on the motorcycles and cycle-rickshaws which plough the beat-up streets.
"Such is his fear and clout that no other political party candidate, though they are contesting, have dared to put up their flags or posters," said Ajit Kumar Singh, a doctor.
His party office has a statue of Mahatma Gandhi, the icon of India's non-violent independence struggle.
But Gandhi would be unlikely to win an election in Bihar, a state of 83 million people where voting is colored by gun-slinging, tough-talking and open brawls.
"No one can win an election in Bihar without firing even a single bullet," said veteran Bihar journalist Kanhaiya Bhellary of The Week magazine.
Shahabuddin has denied involvement in all the criminal cases brought against him and has never been convicted, depriving the federal Election Commission of a possible way to bar him.
The only other political office in Siwan belongs to the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) (CPI-ML), a far-left agrarian party that is Shahabuddin's only credible rival and was the root of one of the most notorious cases against Shahabuddin.
In 1997, Chandrashekhar, a charismatic CPI-ML youth leader at New Delhi's prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University, died in a hail of bullets when he was addressing a meeting on the busy market street in Siwan.
Four years later, when Shahabuddin and his posse led a drive against cheating during college exams, he clashed with a senior police officer who said he was in charge of the tests.
The police officer was reportedly slapped on the cheek, enraging him to such an extent that he launched an operation against Shahabuddin in his ancestral village of Pratapgarh.
"It was a 10-hour gun battle in which Shahabuddin's men fired from all kinds of automatic weapons," said a local witness.
"Shahabuddin managed to escape in the night after 11 of his men were killed," the witness said.
Shahabuddin's evasion of the law ended last year when a new state police chief, D.P. Ojha, reopened his file and slapped a slew of cases against him.
Ojha even sent a report to the federal home ministry claiming Shahabuddin had links with rival Pakistan's spy agency and gunrunners in violence-torn Kashmir.
After months of remaining underground, Shahabuddin surrendered with fanfare in August and vowed to "teach a lesson to madman Ojha."
Ojha was soon sacked by the state government.
Laloo Prasad Yadav, head of Shahabuddin's Rashtriya Janata Dal party and Bihar's de facto ruler, called Shahabuddin his "younger brother" and personally escorted him to file his election nomination.
Many of his constituents see Shahabuddin as a figure similar to Robin Hood.
"He opened so many colleges and schools. Even the girls are going to school.
"Siwan is so safe that women go out for late-night films. He is also opening a huge university. We are all very happy with him," Pradeep Kumar Jaiswal said at a teashop.
"We have put up flags on our own. There is no fear," said Mohammed Riyaz, a furniture shop owner.
But at the CPI-ML office, 24-year-old Abhiyuday, who is studying physics in the state capital Patna, swears his party would one day rid Siwan of "Shahabuddin's terror."
"Those who are putting his flag on their rooftops are doing so out of fear," he said.
"In their hearts, they want a change and we are going to give them this change. Comrade Chandrashekhar did not die in vain."
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
The Philippines yesterday slammed an “irresponsible” Chinese state media report claiming a disputed reef in the South China Sea was under Beijing’s control, saying the “status quo” was unchanged. Tiexian Reef (鐵線礁), also known as Sandy Cay Reef, lies near Thitu Island, or Pagasa, where the Philippines stations troops and maintains a coast guard monitoring base. Chinese state broadcaster CCTV on Saturday said that the China Coast Guard had “implemented maritime control” over Tiexian Reef in the middle of this month. The Philippines and China have been engaged in months of confrontations over the South China Sea, which Beijing claims nearly in its
RSS