Bilauti/Bhojpur (Bihar): It’s a humid afternoon, and 45-year-old Raj Kishore Chaudhary is building his house. It’s a DIY job for he can’t afford labourers or masons. A pressure cooker lets off steam; lunch break is near. Chaudhary begins to ease up.
Chaudhary’s is among 70-odd families settling in this area east of Bilauti village in Bihar’s Bhojpur district where the government has allotted them land. Bhojpur is a low-lying alluvial plain bordered by rivers on three sides; the land is very fertile.
Some of these families have received Rs 80,000 from the government already as part of their Rs 1.2-lakh rehabilitation package. Hand-pumps have been installed, electric poles erected; the displaced have power. Things seem to be moving along at a crackling pace.
The pace of resettlement is deceptive, however. A recent death marks the dividing line between official apathy for the displaced and the keen interest the administration is taking in the development here now.
That death was of Bharat Tiwari.
“It took one life for basic development work to pick up pace here. Earlier, there were only electric poles, with no wires. There were low-lying areas on either side of the unpaved road,” Chaudhary recalls how it was a couple of months ago when he first came to resettle here.
“It was only due to Bharat Tiwari and his consistent efforts and raising voice for us that we have managed to get all these facilities. Sadly, all of what he raised is being doubled at full speed after his death. All his demands had fallen on deaf ears when he was alive.”
Nearly all residents of this locality, displaced from Jawania village after floods last year, echo Chaudhary.
This is another version of the Tiwari saga, a 28-year-old man who stood up for the people, and confronted the Bhojpur Police with an unlicenced weapon. It was in this very hamlet where Chaudhary is making his new home that Tiwari’s confrontation with the police ended in his death.
The Bhojpur Police claims that Bharat Tiwari was killed in an encounter as he was carrying weapons, posing a threat to the life and security of police personnel and society at large. Eyewitnesses, mostly displaced people from Jawania, have another story to tell . They are unequivocal that Tiwari had surrendered and thrown away his weapon; there was no need for shooting at him.
“This is a clear case of murder,” Chaudhary says without any hesitation, even as he takes a fresh load of mortar.
The encounter, and the swirl of allegations and counter-allegations that followed, became a thorn in the flesh for the Samrat Choudhary-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government in the eastern state.
The chief minister had instituted a fact-finding committee led by a retired Patna High Court judge to look into the matter. Meanwhile, the Bhojpur Police booked Deputy Superintendent of Police Rajesh Sharma and Station House Officer Rajesh Malakar, along with other police personnel who were part of the team that carried out the alleged encounter.
‘Passionate, emotional’
Who was Bharat Tiwari? Born the third of four children, Tiwari was always known among his family members as the one more than willing to join a public cause. His only sister says that he was always just a call away from leaving home for a social cause.
“He used to leave food or any other work in the middle as soon as he received a call about some problem or incident that required his presence,” his sister Pushpa Devi recalls. Bharat’s father Kashinath Tiwari was a constable and driver with the Bihar Police, and the family lived with him in Dehri-on-Sone in Rohtas district while he was on duty.
It was in Rohtas that Bharat was educated, and he pursued a Bachelor of Science degree at a local college. However, he never tried to get a job, either in Bhojpur or outside of the district, except for some physical training aimed at joining the police, according to his family.
“He was an activist since his school days. He always used to participate in mass events and would work hard to conduct those activities,” says his father at their Bilauti home.
The house ran primarily on the pension of the senior Tiwari; Bharat’s activism and donations to the poor earned only his father’s ire, villagers told ThePrint.
Bharat’s mother recalls that he spent a few lakh rupees that the family had got from selling a land plot adjacent to their house. “Maybe that was the price of his rebel nature. He was born a rebel and died one,” 60-year-old Asha Devi told ThePrint.
The senior Tiwari said that Bharat was his own man and never paid heed to anyone’s instructions on things he held of special importance. “He believed in Hindu Rashtra and went on foot to Madhya Pradesh’s Chhatarpur to meet (self-styled godman) Dhirendra Shastri in 2022. I tried to convince him of the danger of going on foot, but he did not stop,” the senior Tiwari says.
Three weeks before his fatal confrontation with the police, Tiwari had seen one of the promises he made to the villagers of Bilauti come true. The district administration had constructed and instituted a fire station in the region, a long-term demand raised by Tiwari, according to Bilauti resident Munna Kumar Paswan.
“The promises I made to the people of this region and the country have largely been fulfilled; the remaining commitments concerning Ara district and the rest of Bihar will also be accomplished soon. I extend my heartfelt thanks to the Bhojpur District Magistrate for initiating the work on the ‘Fire Bhavan’ for this area,” Tiwari wrote on 24 May on his Facebook account.
Encounters & run-ins
Questions over the authenticity of the police version of the firing that claimed the life of Bharat Tiwari arose from a live-streamed video from his Facebook account. That video, which lasted 3.42 minutes and was recorded around 10 am on 17 June, features Tiwari saying that the administration had assured him that all his demands would be met.
That scene, unfolding at the rehabilitation site for Jawania village, was a long time in the making, according to posts Tiwari had already put out on Facebook.
“I want to inform the people of society and the country that the Chief Minister of Bihar and his Bhojpur administration have failed to fill the low-lying, pit-filled government land allotted to the residents of Jawania village; nor have they provided any update on the matter.” Tiwari wrote on his Facebook account, along with the same version in a video.
“I will wait another two-four days; if they do not listen to words, they should listen to bullets. Since I have already declared a revolutionary war, there is no guarantee when a hail of bullets might be unleashed upon any lowlives who dare to pull a stunt against this cause. That SDM—the b*****d—will definitely face an encounter, but before that, anyone found engaging in such acts will be the first to be eliminated, thereby igniting a new revolutionary war in this country,” Tiwari had said in Hindi in a post on 7 June, more than a week before the confrontation began on 16 June.
But that was not Tiwari’s first confrontation with the administration. He was booked by the Shahpur police station on the grounds of abuse and assault against a police team which responded to a call of a land dispute between his father and another local resident of Bilauti town. In the report on that incident, an Assistant Sub Inspector alleged that Tiwari abused him, grabbing his collar when asked to produce documents related to the land in question.
On his Facebook account, Tiwari has several videos of speeches by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath in which he discusses his government’s track record on law and order and the role of encounters in eradicating the mafia from the state.
The word ‘encounter’ was used repeatedly in Bharat Tiwari’s Facebook posts in the days leading up to the incident, and the Sub-Divisional Magistrate (SDM) from Jagdishpur was the first and primary target on his list.
After a video that went viral on social media showing him brandishing a weapon and the police unsuccessfully attempting to take it away from him, the Bhojpur Police released a statement, declaring that Tiwari was mentally unwell and that the administration was making an effort to take him for treatment.
The police kept up an intermittent presence throughout the evening and night on 16 and 17 June, but by the morning of the day he was shot dead, Tiwari may well have sensed being encircled.
He uploaded several videos of his confrontation, including one in the early hours of 17 June, where he is seen firing at a police vehicle. “In this revolutionary war of the country, bullets were fired at the Bihar Police, and they ran away with their tails between their legs when I stepped out to carry out their encounter,” Tiwari had written on Facebook.
‘Killed for the poor’
Chaudhary is not finished venting his anger against the killing of Tiwari. “We were here at the spot and saw from our own eyes that he declared his willingness to surrender,” he says. “He was punished by the administration only because it hurt their ego that some common man was raising his voice in the interests of the displaced people from Jawania.”
Neeta Devi says it was about 9 am when she saw Tiwari come to the site, followed by a police team from the other side of their hamlet. “He used to come daily and had only reassurances for us that everything would be done,” she says. “Who would now dare to raise a voice for people like us who have nothing left with life?”
“We have no doubt that he was killed only because he was raising his voice for the rights of poor and displaced people like us. Why would he be killed otherwise? If he had not raised his voice, like all others, he would not have been killed. The road is unpaved and will be washed away in the rain. We were displaced in the floods last year because of living in a low-lying area, and we had been allotted land in a similar area,” she says.
Jhokhar Bin has the same view. “You don’t know why he was murdered?” the 65-year-old asks aggressively. “He was murdered because he raised his voice for the rights of poor people. Those who speak for the poor are murdered now… this has been the situation in Bihar. Why aren’t the ones who looted money from the Ram Mandir trust murdered.”
(Edited by Nardeep Singh Dahiya)
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