AFTER Bathani Tola, the Ranveer Sena was banned – yet the same macabre dance of death watched passively by police and administration, was to unfold again and again. 10 were massacred at Haibaspur (Bikram, in Patna rural district) on 26 March 1997. (Incidentally this was one of the immediate of the Bihar Bandh campaign during which Comrade Chandrashekhar was shot dead by RJD MP Shahabuddin’s men in Siwan on 31 March.)

One of the worst of the massacres was at Batan Bigha, the dalit hamlet of Laxmanpur Bathe. On the night of December 1, 1997, armed cadres of Ranveer Sena crossed the Sone river (that forms the boundary between Bhojpur and Jehanabad (now part of Arwal) districts) and arrived at Laxmanpur-Bathe village. Using swords and guns, they slaughtered 61 people including 27 women, 16 children and one infant). President KR Narayanan called this massacre a ‘national shame.’ But even this did not shame the Laloo Government, which continued to covertly encourage the Ranveer Sena.

JD MP Chandra Deo Verma had called for lifting the ban on the Ranveer Sena. And on 25 January, 1999, the latter massacred 23 at Shankarbigha, in Arwal (Jehanabad); 12 at Narayanpur (Jehanabad) on 10 February 1999; and yet again, on 16 June, 2000, 33 were slaughtered at Miyanpur – this time, most of the victims were poor peasants of the Yadav caste (Laloo’s traditional mass base).