Patna: Police in Bihar have arrested the mastermind of a 1980 massacre, 14 years after he was declared dead by his son. Binay Kumar Singh was arrested from his son’s flat in Patna following a massive raid carried out by police on Friday evening.
Singh, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for his involvement in the massacre of 13 Dalits, went missing shortly after being released from jail on parole in 2000.
To dupe the police, his family members conducted his last rites, threw a feast for the local villagers to mark his death and even submitted to the court an affidavit declaring him dead. To give his “death” even more credibility, his wife even began dressing in widow’s attire, and stopped using vermilion along the parting of her hair, worn by married women. Subsequently, the police also stopped searching for him.
Since then, Singh has travelled to various parts of the country using different identities, and signed lucrative land deals.
The suspect’s ruse was revealed five months ago when the family of a massacre victim went to the police with information about his whereabouts. Further investigation by the police found that the accused was living in his son’s flat in a posh locality of the state capital.
Based on the information, Patna’s senior superintendent of police, Manu Maharaj, formed a special team to keep track of his activities. Finally, on Friday, the police raided the flat and nabbed the accused hiding behind a bundle of clothes.
“This is a big catch for the police. We had been after him for the past four-five months to nab him and finally we were able to catch him,” Maharaj told the media on Friday, adding the police would also register a case against his son Gaurav Singh for misleading the court by submitting a false affidavit about his father’s death and sheltering the accused.
As many as 13 villagers, mostly from the Dalit community, were killed and 17 others wounded when they were attacked in the Paras Bigha village in central Bihar’s Jehanabad district in February 1980 and their houses set on fire. While many burnt to death inside their houses, those who escaped were shot in cold blood by attackers wielding automatic weapons. A total of 51 people were accused in the case.
