Renu Devi's brother held in Bengal

BETTIAH/PATNA: The West Bengal police arrested Ravi Prasad alias Pinu, brother of BJP MLA from Bettiah Renu Devi, from Behrampur police station area in Murshidabad district late on Thursday night. Behrampur’s additional SP Shankar Singh said that he was arrested along with an accomplice, Deepak of Danapur, while three other gangsters escaped. A kidnapped person, Sanjay Singh, was recovered from their clutches.
Patna police sources told TNN that Sanjay Singh, a resident of Pataliputra Colony who runs a school in the state capital, was reported kidnapped during his visit to Kolkata earlier this week.His wife, Namita, alleged in the FIR that she had received a ransom call from the kidnappers.
Bettiah SP Anil Kishore Yadav said the MLA’s brother was absconding in a murder case. “He had been chargesheeted in two other cases of rioting,� he added.
Earlier this year, Pinu’s name cropped up in the murder case of Shyam Silselewal, Bettiah town president of Vishwa Hindu Parishad, who was killed last year. A contract killer, Rahul Singh, in his confessional statement before the police alleged that the conspiracy to kill the VHP leader was hatched by Pinu at his MLA sister’s official residence in Patna.
Interestingly, Renu Devi had accused the Bettiah SP of withdrawing her security guards in her statement to the state assembly earlier this week. The MLA had earlier accused the police of plotting to defame her by dragging her brother’s name in criminal cases.
However, contacted for comments on Friday, she disowned Pinu. She stated that if her brother was engaged in unlawful acts, the police were free to take any action. She was not responsible for his activities.
A first term MLA, Renu was elected in her second attempt in 2000 on an anti-crime slogan. Pitted against her then was Mohd Shamim, an Independent, whose brother Zakir was killed with six others in an encounter with police while commandeering votes at gun-point. Observers recall that Renu won mainly because of Zakir’s elimination.
However, soon after, the local police started receiving complaints about use of muscle power by Pinu. “We took the complaints earlier as motivated to defame the MLA. However, we were soon compelled to take cognizance of cases of rioting by him,� the SP said.
The arrest will put the BJP in a spot on the issue of political patronage to crime.
According to the City SP of Patna, O N Bhaskar, a police team has been sent to Brahampur near Asansole to bring Sanjay and his two kidnappers Ravi Kumar and Deepak.