india

Updated: Dec 29, 2015 15:58 IST

The body of an engineer has been found in a ditch in Vaishali district of Bihar, two days after two other engineers were murdered in the state.

The body of Ankit Jha, a native of Muzaffarpur who was working as a quality engineer with Reliance Telecom, was found at a place 60 kms from capital Patna. He was involved in the laying of optical fibre cable in the district.

Sources said Jha may have been killed by criminals and the body dumped in the ditch. The body has been sent for autopsy and a probe is on to find out who were behind the crime.

Television reports quoted his family members as saying that Jha had left home for work on Sunday night.

“He left at night saying his company car was waiting outside. I thought it must be office work. When I tried to call him in the morning, both his phones were switched off. We then started looking for him but couldn’t find him,” his brother told NDTV.

Elsewhere in the state, a trader named Santosh Agarwal was gunned downed by two men on a motorcycle in the Ahiapur area of Muzaffarpur district on Monday night.

The murders happened on a day chief minister Nitish Kumar instructed the police top brass to curb crime at any cost.

On Saturday, two engineers of a private road construction company were shot dead by two unidentified men on a motorcycle in Darbhanga district, allegedly over an extortion demand. Six people have been arrested in connection with the double murder.

Meanwhile, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday said that it was evident that jungle raj would return in the state post the victory of the grand alliance in the state assembly polls.

BJP leader Rajeev Pratap Rudy lashed out at Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav for failing to bring the situation under control.

”It would not be fair to say that people are paying what they deserve, but we all knew that this is going to happen in Bihar, despite them (Lalu-Nitish) getting victorious. The fact is BJP had promised good governance, people rejected us, they accepted Lalu Yadav and Nitish Kumar as their leaders,” Rudy told ANI.

The BJP leader also highlighted the recent incidents in Bihar to prove his assertion.

”An engineer’s body was found in Vaishali yesterday, two engineers were butchered in Darbhanga, prior to that a business man was shot in Muzzfarnagar, a Sarpanch was killed in my parliamentary constituency in broad day ligh,” he said.

Even Union Minister and LJP chief Ram Vilas Paswan also alleged that “Jungle Raj is back” in the state as predicted by the NDA and slammed the Nitish Kumar government, saying there is “no action” as if there is “some connivance”.

“Jungle Raj (lawlessness) is back in Bihar. In the run-up to Assembly polls, we were saying that there will be Jungle Raj-2 in Bihar if Nitish-Lalu combine wins the elections. “They (Nitish and Lalu) countered it saying it will be ‘Mangal Raj’ (good rule). Now people have to decide whether it is Jungle Raj or Mangal Raj,” Paswan said.

Paswan raised questions over the state government’s functioning saying investments will not come to the state till law and order is maintained.

“One of the main challenges in the state has been of law and order. As long as there is no law and order, there will be investment. Who will come to invest in the state when engineers and doctors are murdered.

Apparently to blunt the good governance plank of Nitish Kumar, the NDA had repeatedly targetted him for aligning with RJD chief Lalu Prasad during the Assembly election campaign saying that if the RJD-JDU-Congress combine came to power, it will be akin to bringing back Jungle Raj for the second time.

The grand alliance of LJP, RJD and Congress, however, handed over a crushing defeat to the NDA, securing 178 seats in the 243-member House. Both Lalu and Nitish staged a comeback after their virtual decimation of their parties in 2014 Lok Sabha polls, when NDA had won 31 of the 40 seats.

With agency inputs