Patna: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) is struggling to retain a plot it had confiscated way back in 2018 in connection with its probe against Bachcha Rai alias Amit Kumar, the main accused in the Bihar topper scam.
On 24 November, the ED lodged an FIR against Bachcha Rai for starting construction illegally on the plot at Hajipur in Vaishali district.
“The ED office received a secret communication on the basis of which it found that illegal construction was going on the 42 decimal land (1 decimal equals to 48.4 square yard) it had confiscated,” ED assistant director, Patna Zonal Office, Rajiv Ranjan mentions in the FIR.
The accused was booked under Sections 188 (disobedience to order duly promulgated), 425 (mischief), 426 (punishment for mischief), 441 (criminal trespass) and 447 (punishment for criminal trespass) of the IPC.
It is not the first time that the ED has complained about encroachment on the plot, which was attached under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002, as the directorate had written to the Vaishali district authority in June, 2022 about illegal excavation of soil from the land.
The Vaishali police has said that the construction in the attached land has been stopped and legal action against Bachcha Rai has been initiated.
Bachcha Rai is one of the key accused of the infamous merit scam in which undeserving candidates secured top positions in the Bihar School Examination Board’s (BSEB) intermediate exams, or school-leaving exams.
The scam had surfaced in 2016 after Class XII humanities topper Ruby Rai said that political science was “prodigal science” in a live interview. Similarly, science topper Saurabh Shrestha was unable to describe the link between water and H2O (the chemical formula for water).
Police had lodged cases against 32 people, including Bachcha Rai, the principal of Vishnu Roy College in Vaishali, in the topper scam. Ruby Rai was a student of Vishnu Roy College, and so was Saurabh Shrestha. The then chairman of Bihar School Examination Board L. P. Singh and his wife and former JDU MLA Usha Singh were also among the accused.
After the scam surfaced, the photos of Bachcha Rai appeared with Nitish Kumar, leaving the Bihar chief minister red-faced and giving ammunition to the opposition parties to attack him. Photos of him with Union minister Giriraj Singh and RJD chief Lalu Prasad, too, were widely shared on social media. Back then, all the high and mighty had disowned the main accused.
“But even after seven years of the surfacing of the scam, if Rai is bold enough to start construction on a confiscated land, it means he still enjoys the patronage of the powerful,” social analyst and former Patna University teacher N. K. Choudhary said.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
Also Read: Why outward migration is higher among upper caste population in Bihar compared to OBCs & EBCs