The Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) of Patna appears to have rubbed the Bihar politicians the wrong way by initiating action against them these days.

Vikas Vaibhav, a 2003-batch IPS officer who returned to the state after his stint in the National Investigation Agency (NIA) recently, got the Patna police enter a station diary against Bihar Pradesh Congress Committee president Ashok Choudhary on the charge of interfering in the police work.

The police action followed after Choudhary, a former minister, called up the SSP on Monday and allegedly asked him to not to take action against a few leaders of the National Students Union of India (NSUI) who had been named accused in a case related to their demonstration outside the bungalow of Bihar's Education Minister PK Shahi over the Siwan mid-day meal tragedy in 2013.

Vaibhav said that he had received a call from somebody who identified himself as the personal assistant of the state Congress president and made him talk to him as well. Treating the phone call as an unnecessary and unlawful effort to influence the police action, the SSP directed the concerned police station to verify the identity of the caller and enter the station diary against them in this regard.

"Influencing police action is unlawful," he said later. "Law is equal for everybody and the police investigates the cases in an impartial manner." Choudhary, however, hit back at the SSP by vehemently denying that he had tried to exert pressure on Vaibhav. Admitting that he had called up the SSP, the BPCC president denied that he had tried to influence the police in the case. "As people's representative, I had merely requested the SSP to personally monitor the case," he said. "I did not exert any pressure on him at all."

Choudhary demanded that the transcript of his conversation with the SSP should be released. "I have been in public life for long. I am dismayed over my name being dragged unnecessarily in the case," he said.

Accusing Vaibhav of committing atrocity against a Dalit leader,the Congress president moved a privilege motion against the SSP in the Bihar legislative council. Choudhary, however, is not the only politician Vaibhav has taken action against since taking over a fortnight ago. Only a day after joining as the SSP in Patna, Vaibhav raided the house of the ruling Janata Dal-United's bahubali legislator Anant Singh, whose name had cropped up in the murder of a youth from Barh. The SSP not only arrested the Mokama MLA later but also reopened other pending cases against him.

This infuriated Anant who accused the Patna police of having a hidden agenda against him ahead of the state assembly elections. Another former RJD minister Ejajul Haque also had the taste of the new SSP's style of policing after he was found stabbed at his home recently. Though Haque, who is at present the state president of the Samras Samaj Party floated by former Union minister Nagmani, had claimed that he was attacked by three unidentified intruders who had barged into his home to commit robbery, the SSP revealed that the accused in the case - an 18-year-old youth, had alleged after his arrest that the former minister was stabbed by him after he tried to sodomise him. He said that the police had also recovered some arms from Haq's place and would investigate the matter.

Haque, whose party members staged protest against the police saying he was being implicated in a false case, said that he would file a defamation case against the SSP for making public the unfounded allegations levelled against him by a criminal.