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THE reaction from the Bihar administration, including the police machinery, to the naxalite attack on the Jehanabad jail could be summed up in two words: utter confusion. And in that state of disorder, the officials not only blamed one another but also assaulted journalists.
The blame game was initiated by the district administration, which cited inadequate availability of police personnel in the town on the night of November 13. The argument put forward by sections of the administration, including District Magistrate Rana Avadesh, suggested that since the Election Commission had deployed the town's security personnel unilaterally in other parts of the State on election duty, there were not enough forces to repulse the attack.
Police officials, including State police chief A.R. Sinha and Inspector-General of Police (Operations) R.R. Verma, said the administration had been warned about possible naxalite attacks as early as November 11, when the militants raided a Home Guard Training Centre at Giridih in Jharkhand, killing seven persons and looting as many as 185 firearms and several rounds of ammunition. Some police officers said a wireless message had been sent to Rana Avadesh by R.R. Verma warning that similar attacks could take place in Jehanabad too.
Even on the day of the attack, the District Magistrate had been warned orally and through a fax message - sent at 4-34 p.m. - by R.R. Verma about possible attacks on Nadaul railway station, near Jehanabad, the Kako police picket and the police lines. The police lines, incidentally, was one of the targets of the November 13 attack.
Rana Avadhesh then responded by stating that the extent of damage would have been limited if the police headquarters had promptly acted on its own intelligence inputs and rushed reinforcements in time to the force-starved district.
Rana Avadesh displayed a total lack of poise when he visited the jail on the morning of November 14, the day after the attack. Entry to the jail was unrestricted at this time since the skeleton security staff present at the time of the attack had virtually surrendered to the naxalites and abandoned their positions. Many journalists took this opportunity to enter the jail and interview some of the prisoners who had refused to flee.
It was at this point that Rana Avadesh visited the jail, and on seeing the journalists he lost his cool. He snatched a lathi (baton) from one of the policemen and started beating up the journalists. Seeing the District Magistrate in action, the accompanying policemen joined in. One of those assaulted brutally was the Patna-based senior journalist of The Hindu, K. Balchand.
The police continued the attack on journalists later when the two-member inquiry committee, consisting of I.G. (Railways) A.C. Verma and Secretary of the Water Resource Department V. Jaishanker, visited Jehanabad to investigate. The journalists were beaten up as many as three times.
Interestingly, the administration tried to fix accountability only for the security failures. The Superintendent of Police of Jehanabad Sunil Kumar was punished. Kumar was suspended and replaced with B.S. Meena, while Rana Avadesh remained the District Magistrate.
While the administration seemed to be completely overwhelmed by a blame-game syndrome, some politicians followed suit, albeit without much success. It was the leadership of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that took the lead in the political blame game. Party leaders such as C.P. Thakur and Uma Bharati alleged that Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader and Railway Minister Lalu Prasad was behind the attack. The contention was that Lalu Prasad was trying to prop up a caste war using naxalites. This campaign, however, did not find many takers though some sections of the media gave it some importance.
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