New Delhi: Anant Kumar Singh, former Mokama MLA and a notorious criminal with a record of 52 cases, ranging from abduction and murder to violations of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), wasted no time when he walked out of a Patna jail on 15 days of parole earlier this week. He immediately began canvassing for Rajiv Ranjan Singh, also known as Lalan Singh, the Janata Dal (United) candidate for Bihar’s Munger Lok Sabha seat.
Despite being a convicted criminal, Singh wields considerable clout in Munger, under which Mokama falls. While he was granted parole by the Bihar Home Department to resolve an “ancestral property matter”, the opposition Rashtriya Janata Dal has denounced it as a political manoeuvre by the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA). Beur Jail superintendent Jitendra Kumar told ThePrint that Singh received parole from 5 May until 7 pm on 19 May after providing two guarantors and two bail bonds of Rs 10,000 each.
Singh walked out of Beur Jail on the outskirts of Patna Sunday amid chants and garlanding by scores of supporters. He headed straight to Munger’s Mokama and declared in meetings and media interactions that Lalan would win the election by a massive margin. Munger goes to polls on 13 May in the fourth phase.
The JD(U) is under fire from the opposition for allegedly using Singh’s strongman reputation to sway the Bhumihar vote bank in Lalan’s favour. RJD leader and former Bihar deputy chief minister Tejashwi Yadav criticised the Nitish Kumar government for its inconsistent treatment of Singh based on political affiliation. “(Anant Kumar Singh) was a criminal when he was with us, now that he is with JD(U), he is a saint,” Yadav told reporters.
This isn’t an isolated case. In April last year, the then JD(U)-RJD government amended prison rules, allowing Anand Mohan Singh, a gangster from the Rajput community convicted of lynching former Gopalganj District Magistrate G Krishnaiah, to walk free after 16 years in prison.
ThePrint pieces together the life and journey of Anant Singh, or “Chhote Sarkar”, and how his relationship with two top leaders of the state — current Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and former CM Lalu Prasad Yadav — decided his fate and consequently, that of the candidates in Mokama.
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Criminal history
Anant Kumar Singh’s criminal history stretches back over four decades. The affidavit filed before the 2020 Bihar assembly elections shows that the first criminal case against him dates to May 1979, when he was booked in a murder case along with others. However, a chargesheet was never filed.
Singh has been booked in 39 cases, according to his affidavit. However, the number is higher according to Patna High Court documents, which state there have been as many as 52 cases against him. Overall, he was convicted in just two—one in 2015 and another in 2019.
In 2015, Patna Police conducted a raid at his residence following an abduction-murder case involving four young men who were kidnapped on 17 June of that year. During the raid, the police recovered six empty magazines for an INSAS rifle, a bulletproof jacket, and some bloodstained clothing. The next day, the body of one of the victims, Putush Yadav, was found in Singh’s ancestral village, Nadawan.
Singh’s lawyer Sunil Kumar told ThePrint that this case marked only the second time that the ex-MLA was put behind bars, and it took him nearly 22 months to secure bail. The lawyer added that Singh has been arrested a total of three times— once before 2015, again in 2015, and lastly in 2019. Following his 2019 arrest in an Arms Act case, he remained in custody until his conviction.
In 2019, Patna Police raided his residence in the early hours of 16 August, and recovered an AK-47 and hand grenades from his residence, which fell under the jurisdiction of Barh police station. He, however, managed to escape arrest initially, and then surrendered in a local court in Delhi in a dramatic move, a week later.
Singh’s lawyer, Sunil Kumar, told ThePrint that this case marked only the second time that the ex-MLA was put behind bars, and it took him nearly 22 months to secure bail. The lawyer added that Singh has been arrested a total of three times— once before 2015, again in 2015, and lastly in 2019. Following his 2019 arrest in an Arms Act case, he remained in custody until his conviction.
In 2022, Singh was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the 2015 case involving the recovery of an INSAS rifle and other weapons. The same year, he was also convicted in the 2019 AK-47 recovery case, which also included charges under UAPA. However, his lawyer clarified that the UAPA charges were dropped in the chargesheet, and he was convicted solely under the Arms Act.
On Wednesday, the Patna High Court rejected Singh’s plea for bail in the 2015 arms case.
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Back-and-forth between JD(U) & RJD
Anant Kumar Singh is the youngest of four sons of Chandradeep Singh, who owned several horse carts in Nadawan village in Patna district.
Political analyst D.M. Diwakar, a former director at the A.N. Sinha Institute of Social Studies, told ThePrint that Singh’s life of crime has its roots in when his elder brother Dilip Singh became a close associate of local ganglord Kamdev Singh. After Kamdev’s murder, Dilip took over his criminal empire.
Meanwhile, Singh’s other elder brothers — Biranchi and Fajo Singh — were killed in an incident of caste-based violence. It is said that he swam across an entire stretch of a river in his area to trace and eliminate the killers of his brothers, but there are no police records to verify this.
As Dilip gained influence, Professor Diwakar told ThePrint, he was given political protection by the then Mokama MLA. Dilip used to be a close confidant of the MLA until he was one day asked by the legislator not to come to his Patna residence during the day to avoid causing him embarrassment. Dilip was miffed and went on to challenge the MLA in the Mokama assembly constituency, and ended up defeating him by a huge margin in 1990.
Political analyst and professor at Patna University, Rakesh Ranjan, told ThePrint that Dilip was only the poster boy, but it was Anant who used to call the shots and drive his political activity. However, after Dilip was defeated by another regional strongman Surajbhan Singh of the Lok Janshakti Party, he went into political exile, leaving the door open for Anant Singh to foray into mainstream politics.
Sensing an opportunity with the rise of Nitish Kumar as a challenger to Lalu Yadav, Singh debuted in the second round of assembly elections in 2005 and won on a JD(U) ticket.
He retained the seat in 2010, until he quit the JD(U) after his arrest in the abduction and murder case of 2015 and Nitish Kumar’s alliance with the RJD. However, he contested from Mokama constituency as an independent candidate and defeated Neeraj Kumar of his former party.
In the last assembly polls in 2020, Singh joined hands with Lalu Yadav’s RJD because he was upset with Lalan, the JD(U) national president at the time, whom he is now campaigning for. Singh contested from his bastion, Mokama, and won with RJD’s ‘lantern’ symbol.
Such was the influence of Anant Singh in Patna region, professor Diawakar recalled, that a state minister once went to inaugurate one of his business premises, a property that was declared illegal by a local court.
However, as he was convicted and subsequently disqualified from the assembly, he fielded his wife Neelam Devi on an RJD ticket. Neelam, the incumbent MLA, however, switched her allegiance from RJD to the Nitish Kumar-led government earlier this year, during the trust vote.
Ironically, Singh himself had blamed Lalan for “planting” guns at his residence that got him arrested. His wife had contested against Lalan in the last general elections.
Guns, Mercedes & horses
Political leaders in Patna recall Singh as a politician who had no qualms about flaunting his considerable wealth.
“What you see on TV is exactly the psyche that drives Anant Singh. He is not that polished politician, who is apologetic about his wealth and clout. He would rather overestimate and overexpress his Robinhood image and its implications, than underestimate it,” a political leader who has closely observed Singh’s’s political growth told ThePrint.
Singh reportedly first burst into public prominence in the mid-2000s when footage of him brandishing an AK-47 and dancing was aired on TV channels. His elder brother was popularly called “Bade Sarkar” in the region and Singh became “Chhote Sarkar”, a title that he still wears on his sleeve.
Sanjeet Kumar, a close associate of Singh, told ThePrint that he had brought a lavish horse cart in 2012 from Delhi, and used to commute by it for fun those days. “He loved a bit of style and showing off his wealth,” he said.
Before grabbing eyeballs for riding a horse cart to a Bihar Legislative Assembly session in 2013, Singh was also known as the only MLA in the assembly, who owned a Mercedes car.
Another political leader in Patna, on the condition of anonymity, told ThePrint that Anant Singh had also purchased a horse from Lalu Yadav at Sonepur cattle fair in 2007, using his frontman’s name, knowing that Yadav would not be willing to sell the horse to him if he had divulged his own.
(Edited by Mannat Chugh)
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