When Ranvir Sena founder Brahmeshwar Singh, aka Mukhiyaji, came out of Ara jail after nine long years in July last year, he hardly looked like a man who was accused of having masterminded some of the worst carnages in Bihar's history. Looking frail and sporting an unkempt white beard, he showed no signs of the power that he had wielded in the killing fields of Bihar in his heydays.





At 66, he was widely expected to trudge into the twilight of his life battling against the dozen-odd criminal cases that were still pending against him. After his release from the jail on bail, he headed straight to three temples in Ara and Patna before making a triumphant return to his native place Khopira in Bhojpur district.





But Brahmeshwar was not turning spiritual, to say the least. Within days, he announced his intentions to set up a new front to champion the rights of the farmers in the state. He called this apolitical forum Akhil Bharatiya Rashtravadi Kisan Sanghtan and insisted that it was not associated with any political party or association owing allegiance to any caste, creed and religion. He said that he would visit the different districts in the central and south Bihar to press the government for protecting the rights of the farmers without resorting to any kind of violence.





But he did not fight shy of voicing his opinion against the establishment even then. When all the accused in the Bathani Tola massacre were acquitted by the Patna High Court in April this year, the Bihar government had resolved to challenge the verdict in the Supreme Court. This had angered Brahmeshwar, who accused the state government of adopting a biased attitude against the upper castes. He asked why the government did not go for a similar appeal when the accused in the killing of Jwala Singh, an upper caste landlord from Ekbari village, were acquitted.





Since his release from prison, Mukhiyaji had time and again insisted that he was in no way associated with the killings perpetrated in the name of Ranvir Sena. He said that it was a deep-rooted conspiracy by the erstwhile Rashtriya Janata Dal government to implicate him in false cases. Nonetheless, he failed to shrug off his image of a mass murderer despite his persistent denials. He even earned the sobriquet of the 'Butcher of Bihar'.





"Do I look like a mass murderer?" he often asked.

But Brahmeshwar was once the most wanted man in Bihar, carrying a reward of Rs 5 lakh on his head for eight years, since the time he founded Ranvir Sena. The dreaded militia of the upper caste landlords was formed in 1994 to counter the ultra-left extremists, who were purportedly fighting for the rights of the poor peasants in the central Bihar districts of Bhojpur, Jehanabad, Gaya and Aurangabad.

Brahmeshwar, known to be a shrewd strategist who spent his time reading Vivekanand in jail, had founded the Sena in the wake of the killings of several upper caste men by the Maoists. But the grapevine has it that he initially took to arms along with fellow villagers after an upper caste youth was assaulted by some scheduled caste people for asking for a matchbox to light his cigarette in his ancestral village.





Mukhiyaji, a post-graduate in political science from Patna University, had earlier taken over the reins of the Ranvir Kisan Sangharsh Samiti headed by Sheo Narain Choudhary, the erstwhile mukhiya (village headman) of Belaur village. The organisation had been set up basically to check the spread of ultra-left extremism, which was then rising rapidly in central Bihar. But this outfit soon turned into a militant organisation under him. It was deliberately named after a former army man from the area who had become a local icon for fighting for the rights of the upper castes in the British era.





Brahmeshwar, who had become a mukhiya quite early in his life, was himself a prosperous farmer owning 100 bighas of land, two houses and a car. He was the most respectable man in his village because he had always worked for the welfare of fellow villagers. It is said that the Naxal outfits often targeted his property, which forced him to take up arms to counter them. After his arrest in Patna in 2002, he had said that he did not repent the massacres because they were retaliatory in nature. In fact, he also took pride in the fact that he had not surrendered but had been arrested by the police. But after his release, he denied involvement in any of the massacres.

Brahmeshwar was caught by the Patna police in August 2002 from an apartment on the Exhibition Road where he was hiding incognito. Mukhiyaji had always kept a low profile and had managed to avoid the media when he was heading the militia. In fact, the Patna police were surprised to see his "school teacher-like appearance" after his arrest.

Ranvir Sena had remained very active even while he was leading an underground life, but after his arrest, the outlawed organisation struggled to survive. By the time he came out of the jail, it was perceived to be a defunct organisation.