Ranvir Sena chief Brahmeshwar Singh shot dead, curfew clamped in Ara

TNN

ARA ( BIHAR), 01 Jun 2012: A day-long curfew was clamped here on Friday as tension escalated following the gunning down of Brahmeshwar Singh, chief of now-defunct private militia Ranvir Sena.

 

"We have imposed a day-long curfew on Ara town," Sub-divisional officer Dharmesh Kumar said, adding, that the situation was tense, but under control.

 

Prohibitory orders under section 144 CrPC were also enforced in the district after the killing of Singh alias Mukhiyaji.

 

Brahmeshwar Singh was on a morning walk when he was accosted by gunmen who pumped several bullets into him, killing him on the spot at Katira Mohalla under Nawada police station, 71 kms from Patna.

 

Singh, who was earlier facing life imprisonment in various carnage cases, was acquitted and recently released from jail. He was the former mukhiya of Khopira panchayat of the Sandesh block of Bhojpur district and assumed leadership of the then Ranvir Kisan Sangharsh Samiti from the then mukhiya of Belaur block, Sheo Narain Choudhary, in 1994. In fact, under Choudhary’s leadership, the samiti was not in a position to counter the move of CPI (ML)’s decision to impose economic ban on farmers in several villages of Bhojpur district. Brahmeshwar finally turned the samiti into a militant organisation which finally became Ranvir Sena.

 

On July 25, 1995, the Ranvir Sena killed six people belonging to Musahar caste in Sarathua village, located near the Belaur village, the Sena headquarters. But Singh came into limelight after the infamous carnage at Bathani Tola under the Sahar block of Bhojpur district on July 10, 1996, in which the victims were mostly children and women.

 

This was followed by a series of massacres in different villages of Bhojpur district. Four people were killed by Sena at Chandi village in February, three in Patalpura in March and five in Nanaur in April month of the same year. The spreading activities of the Sena finally forced the state government to ban it in August 1995.